A 



A 



V^ 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



HESPERUS 

AND OTHER POEMS 



I Vol. i2mo. 276 pages 
Cloth, beveled edges, uncut, $1.50 



THE 



VISION OF NIMROD 



CHARLES DE KAY 



y^rr 



u. J n 1 / n 



i h i^ I ^ 



i^lH 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON & CO 

LONDON 

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON 

1881 



^ 






CoPYEtGHT 
1881 

By CHARLES de KAY. 
All Rights Reserved. 



PHESS OF 4. J. LITTLE & CO., 
NOS. 10 TO 20 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. 



THE PROLOGUE 



THE PROLOGUE. 



No bard of those who stirred the old glorious time, 
Firdausi, Saadi, J ami the sublime , 
Might chant of Goiirred and her lover true 
The prophet AH. Still are rhymes to you 
Grateful? Their loves that shot a deathless light 
In this our century's morn through Persian night- 
Like new moon with the splendid daystar blent — 
Shall live in nimble numbers, nor be pent 

Longer by dry historian in his tome. 

3 



The visions which these lovers far from home 
Met in the waste shall us amaze and teach. 
See Nimrod rise and tell the truth of each 
At his old court, describe the birth of things 
From soulless matter ^ trace through fins and wings 
The breath that sways creation lozv and high ; 
Hear him rebuild the pile which should defy 
The heavens, and then confess him, last of all, 
Of that unhallowed flame which wrought his fall. 



A nd after ? When is told the perilous plight 
Of Gourred captured, then a second night 
May yield the spectre of that queen betrayed 
Who Nimrod ruled. 

But ere this, to my aid 
Come, gentle souls, who gladly tales rehearse 
hi intertwined and overlapping verse ! 
Poets must have their audience. It behooves 
Singers who fail to strike the popidar grooves 
To hide their lyres, nor still the people vex. 



Yet question ever must the soul perplex 
Of what men like ^ what like ?iot. In the end 
The hoot of enemy a?id psalm of friend 
Mix to a sound confused that lasts for some 
Brief space, for others after lips are dumb 
Below the soil. But who knows whether he, 
Or he shall live, to-day or later ? See 
How the broad comet awe and marvel casts, 
Then is forgot. The little north star lasts. 



THE PERSIAN REFORMERS 



THE PERSIAN REFORMERS 



The dusk lies thick upon the deep-grooved river 

Where Babylon once stood in all her pride ; 
Up from the waste there runs a lonely shiver ; 

A jackal prowls across the desert wide. 
On a strange peak are men. Two forms are sitting 

Motionless, black, as if engraved in stone ; 
Dumb since the lapwings to their nests were flitting, 

Still while the owl was quavering forth his moan. 
Whose are these figures two 
Sombre of hue ? 



lo The Persian Reformers. 

" Freedom to love ! " Was theirs that plaintive strain 

Piercing the shades that over Asia quivered ? 
Birds at the omen stir, yet grasp again 

With trembling feet the branches of a shivered 
And desperate tree, whose gaunt roots to the side 

Of ruins on the barren mound are clinging. 
Who could house there ? Who was the mourner sighed 

About the hour when the great bats go winging 
Slower their sated flight 
Through the brown night ? 

Whom his grief chokes and silent wrath convulses. 

With chin on breast, buried in hopeless thought, 
Has All for his name. The gentler pulses 

Stir in a lady so celestial-wrought 
In face and figure that admiring kindred 

Long long before had given her for name 
Gourred-oul-Ayn, Rest of the Eyes. That hind'red 

Nothing that soon they cast her words of shame ! 
Fickle are men and swift 
Their grace to shift, 



The Persian Reformers. ii 

And where their love was great their hate is bitter, 

As sweetest milk soon turns to sourest whey ; 
So where with flowers the jungles loveliest glitter 

There poisons linger deadliest by the way. 
Who stands so firm, that sometimes he has not 

Felt faith, truth, hope, earth, solid rock dissolving. 
Felt that a sneering god has laid a plot 

To break his victim on the slow-revolving 
Wheel of the groaning years 
With blood and tears? 

Since the last glimmer of the sun down rushing 

Ali had lain and wrestled hard with gloom ; 
Within his brain was night like blackness crushing 

The last of light before the day of doom. 
But on his face the eyes of that sweet woman 

Were tenderly and most divinely bent, 
While through her heart a gust of superhuman 

Clean passion for her sorrowing comrade went ; 
Then did he know great calm 
Flow from her palm. 



12 The Persian Reformers. 

" Nokteh," she said, and laid her smooth, warm fingers 

Upon the knotted hands that fiercely burned, 
" Nokteh," she pleaded, " Heart of Truth, why lingers 

Dumbness so obstinate and so unearned ? 
Speak ; let your words, fruitful as citron flowers. 

Bloom from strong soil about my listening ear ; 
Speak ; let your wisdom like the autumnal showers 

Rain on the desert of your silence drear. 
Better may two sustain 
Pleasure and pain." 

Then from recesses of his laboring chest 

Came a slow sigh, of grief as he were dying, 
Yet answer made to her benign request 

Happier in tone, but woeful still replying: 
" Gourred-oul-Ayn, I am not selfish-sad. 

But oh, the doubt that has come roaring, surging 
About my heart had almost set me mad. 

All else in seas of horror deep submerging. 
When your sweet dove-like hand 
Told me of land. 



The Persian Reformers, 13 

" 'Tis you I grieve for, my matchless Gourred ! 

I cannot bear remember it was I, 
I, guilty wretch ! with whom away you hurried ; 

For me, an outcast through the world you fly ; 
You hear affronts and undergo temptations, 

Daily you bear the Mollah's learned prate ; 
This very day the latest of our stations 

Exposed you to the insult of the great, 
Offering their gold for love 
To the white dove. 

" You could aim high. Did not that Jewish malice 

Called Hand-of-Sultan promise you a seat 
Second to none at Stamboul in the palace 

If on his camel you would cross your feet ? 
It is too much. You were a Moslem woman 

Born to the veil, to couches, slumbrous ease, 
Meant with a nod a host of slaves to summon 

And make your master but the first of these : 
Gourred, I have too long 
Done you great wrong ! 



14 The Persian Reformers. 

" What though my writings hide beneath a mass 

Of flowery verbiage the great news we offer. 
Our foes are keen, and, as in river grass 

The pitfall lurks for elephants, the scoffer 
Has digged for us a pit. The Persian hand 

Can reach thus far, although I only utter 
To earnest pilgrims through this Turkish land 

Truths clean as those that in the rain clouds mutter, 
Facts to which Asia knew 
Of old the clue. 

" But fight I may not ; — though another morning 

Shall see us tracked, made captive, led in chains, 
Though violence follow swiftly on the warning 

We had to-day from him, who but refrains 
His stroke one hour to strike more certainly . . . 

Outcast and fugitive, what arduous duties 
Are these you share ! What pardon can there be 

If lawless men should shame your glorious beauties 
When the next sun shall reign 
O'er this old plain?" 



The Persian Reformers. ^5 

Over his lips another hand came sliding 

Gentle as south winds on the myrtle boughs, 
Then in a voice, mellow in words of chiding, 

Gourred her passion on his brow bestows : 
" Pride of my life, know it was not your beauty 

That drew me on ; no, nor your manly form ; 
The choice it was of more than one great duty 

Which in this world I live but to perform. 
Yours I resolved to be, 
Eternally — 

"Why? — were there not men richer, manlier, fairer. 

Who longed and sighed this frame of mine to win? 
Ay, but like you which one of all was sharer 

Of wealth so pure and jewel-like within ! 
'Twas your star soul, your planet mind, O Sayid ! 

Drawing me on with such resistless might 
As moves gazelles, when they by streams have played, 

Suddenly toward the waste to wing their flight. 
Sayid, my desert's green 
Where you are seen. 



1 6 The Persian Reformers. 

" Oh, how this woman's life of mine is fragrant 

With honor, Sayid, since I came with you ! 
A doer of good, a teacher, though a vagrant ; 

Once a lost flower that in the canebrake grew. 
By this the harem with its dreary vices 

Had made of me a tyrant and a slave, 
A wretch whose body with its charm entices 

A spouse allowed another's love to crave ! 
From that corrupting den 
You drew me then 

" When I the dust of my own door shook off 

And made with you from that time forth my dwelling, 
Vowed that no hardship, woe, nor want, nor scoff. 

Nor crime of man, my maiden thoughts dispelling, 
Should break our faith, or block our chosen path. 

Though you foretell, O greatest of all minds ! 
That we shall perish by the mole-eyed wrath 

Of men whom selfishness forever blinds ; 
Still, till that time shall come, 
You are my home." 



The Persian Reformers. 17 

Up toward the stars their hands her comrade lifted 

And cried : "Ye steadfast, that do yonder shine, 
If you have strength, let upon her be sifted 

Such even happiness as ne'er was mine ! 
Chase from the hearts of men those evil tenets 

Taught by a seer who fell before a jinn ; 
The race this lady runs, O let her win it, 

And save this nation from its cancerous sin ; 
Deaden Mohammed's name 
With his great shame ! 

" He, my great forefather in race and mind, 

Swerved from his path, the lusts of flesh obeying: 
He his own conscience and his friends would blind 

With forms of prayer, with silly fasts, which, preying 
On the firm flesh, left souls as foul as ever. 

Scarce to his Paradise the tender race 
Of helpful women reach through strong endeavor. 

Tyrant, he scorned the weak; he lacked of grace 
And meanly humbled those 
Through whom he rose ! 



1 8 The Persian Reformers. 

" But may you, Gourred, see life's utmost statioiij 

When that which Prankish hypocrites pretend 
Shall really be throughout the Persian nation. 

Then veils and harems all shall be at end ; 
Woman shall stand in sunlight, modest, honored ; 

Shall freely choose one mate to be her own ; 
Then she that falls is openly dishonored. 

But she that keeps her pure and clean is known. 
Not, as behind one screen, 
Clean and unclean. 

" But I have news, O comforter in sorrow ! 

Hidden from you, because you are so dear ; 
Yet I must tell it, lest a sneer to-morrow 

From cruel foes shall drive you to despair. 
Our Boush-Reweeyeh — whom I made the Gate 

Wherethrough the faithful to our doctrines enter, 
The learned doctor, the wise man of state, 

The nearest yet to me, who am the Centre — 
Tempted by hates abhorred, 
Has drawn the sword. 



The Persian Reformers, 19 

" In lieu of peace he offers war. Alas ! 

On threatening Moslem curses he bestoweth. 
No longer meek, unhinderable as grass, 

In humblest guise the patient way he goeth. 
So fell Mohammed. Ah, he would be founder 

Of temporal realms for me the prophet high ! 
He would be conqueror, would he? not expounder 

Of creeds that raise men from their misery ! 
Blood, Gourred, has been spilt. 
Ours is the guilt. 

" Ay, hide your face, poor man-deceived lady, 

The worst draws nigh. For though all Persia's head 
Is careless or for Koran or for Kadi 

And scorns whate'er the greatest prophet said — 
Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, gentle Christ^ 

Still, when reform attacks a Moslem tenet, 
He will be quick the Mollah's cry to list. 

Nor can the pureness of our dogma screen it, 
Nor us our holy zeal 
From his cool steel ! " — 



20 The Persian Reformers, 

" Peace, let it come ! " spoke out that trusty spirit. 

" We've done our best ; what more is there to say ? 
If neither Shah nor people see the merit 

Our creed contains, 'tis time we went our way. 
But do not groan for me. What thing am I 
I To cause in you so deeply sad a feeling? 
I live to please you, not alarmed to fly 

Dangers real, fancied, perils that come stealing 
O'er a mind, as when stars 
An earthmist mars. 

"Ah, can you dream that I should cease," cried Gourred, 

" From aiding you upon this mission high ? 
If for one hour I keep you from that worried, 

Sad, hunted look gazelles have when they die, 
I am repaid ! O Ali, I'm your brother. 

Sister and wife, your father, race and town, 
And mine it is, O prophet pure, to smother 

A little of the woe that weighs you down ; 
I, not so strong as you. 
Yet am more true. 



The Persian Reformers. 21 

" List to my parable : These hawthorns staunch 

That lean apart, that storms still more may sunder, 
What though the raven croak within their branch ? 

Far down below, the rocky mound soil under, 
Their roots have gripped about the self-same stones. 

Soft in the twig, their slanting trunks are harder, 
But on their wrapped and married roots cyclones 

iSIay pour their fur}^ ! All that envious ardor 
Ser\^es but to steel the more 
Their pith, their core. 

" Such is our fate ; consider! You did rightly 

To break away from that lone citadel 
Where foes and friends supposed you poring nightly 

O'er themes of life to come in heaven or hell. 
Why should not we ourselves advance the church ? 

We, making converts 'mid these pilgrims zealous. 
Hasten the day that triumph boldly perch 

Upon our faith, when Moslemin most callous 
From their old rotten creed 
Joy to be freed. 



22 The Persian Reformers. 

"But if we must die, let us die together, 

And, ere we go, further your god-sent work, 
Loosing, as camels from a cruel tether, 

The wives of Iran who in harems lurk. 
Oh, that a man should imitate the beasts 

That chew the cud — their lusts forever sating ! 
The ancient king who lorded o'er these wastes 

Was humbled to an ox the marsh-grass eating, 
Because his heart within 
Reeked with that sin. 

" Yes, to this day in all these cities men 

On cheek or forehead bear a scar assignant 
Of God's displeasure. That strange mark of wen, 

Those scars in shape of date and sores malignant. 
What mean they, save that for some centuries 

Doom is deferred ? To-morrow in his ire 
Floods may dislodge them from their seats of ease ; 

Like windfall figs they may be drowned in mire ; 
Lightning may leave no trace 
Of their lost race. 



The Persian Reformers. 23 

" My friend and husband, lord, and only master, 

Be comforted, blows could not drive away 
Your Consolation-of-the-Eyes ; disaster. 

Hunger, nor thirst shall her firm soul dismay ; 
But speak again, for on this mound is brooding 

I know not what of ghostly and of strange ; 
A chill expectancy itself obtruding 

As though it came from past our human range ! 
Closer ! oh, clasp me tight 
Against this fright ! " 



II 



THE VISION OF NIMROD 



II 



THE VISION OF NIMROD. 



No sun, no moon. Northward the star Orion, 

The star of Nimrod, had the zenith won, 
When from the waste the roaring of a Hon 

Boomed like the bursting of a signal gun. 
They saw with fright the even dusk of night 

Roll to a shape, black on the starlit heaven, 
And lo, a Lion of enormous might, 

Shadowy, shaggy ! From his jaws of ravin 
Issued the awful sound 
That shook the ground. 

27 



28 The Vision of Nimrod, 

And as they gazed, speechless with mortal terror, 

It took new form like ocean's clouds at morn ; 
The lion changed ; — that surely was no error 

Which saw a bull shaking his dreadful horn ? 
But hardly of the new shape were they 'ware 

When the brute's head of him so fiercely charging 
Turned human ; a grave face with curling hair, 

Its ordered locks on breast and back discharging, 
Loomed through the dusky night 
And stayed their flight. 

Then from the face, locked with a steadfast meaning 

Upon their eyes, the shape took change and flow. 
And lo, a giant on a war-club leaning, 

Lifted on high, held the dark plain below. 
Purple and golden on his stalwart shoulders 

His garments lay, but spotted all and torn, 
Like robe that long in royal cavern molders ; 

And round his neck upon a chain v/as worn, 
Like a strange cross to see, 
An amber key. 



The Vision of Nimrod. 29 

But all that coat, by tooth of time corroded, 

Was full of eyes and little crescent moons 
And peaches over-ripeness has exploded — ' 

Pomegranates cloven by a score of noons. 
The war-club whereupon his left hand rested 

Was scaly like a pinecone huge in size ; 
Against those two his shadowy bulk he breasted 

And with his right hand pointed toward the skies. 
Then in a voice of dread 
Croaking, he said : 

" Barbarians ! Once, with sages of Chaldee, 

I, Nimrod, watched upon a tower's back. 
Marking the planets creep most cunningly 

A pinnacle past, which sharply cut their track ; 
Methought this arm, that was all rigid grown 

With following slow their motions wise and stealthy, 
Grew boundless large, reached upward to yon sown 

Broad field, the sky, with red ripe star-fruits wealthy, 
Plucked and consumed them still 
At my fair will ! 



30 The Vision of Nimrod. 

" 'Twixt Kaf and Kaf, those hills that wall the world, 

My body stretched, and from my heaving breast 
The streams of breath, against the hard sky hurled, 

Were turned to clouds that veered at my behest. 
Anon the horizon with sharp white was lit 

And by that glare the veil of things was riven ; 
The door to strange new lands was suddenly split, 

As if I, earth, had caught a glimpse of heaven. 
I saw how great that bliss, 
How petty this ! 

" That was the hour of evil fates descending ; 

From that strange night I was not merely man : 
Where'er I marched crowds must be still attending 

Me, the great midpoint of the earthly plan. 
Euphrates was the life-blood of my heart ; 

Tigris a vein that throbbed with ceaseless motion ; 
In me the firs of Ararat had part 

And I was earth, air, fire and boundless ocean ! 
Folly from that black day 
Held me in sway. 



The Vision of Nimrod. 31 

" From Ur the town I marched with vainness blinded 

And founded empires in the teeming plain ; 
Lured to revolt ten cities fickle-minded, 

And dared the gods that could not save their slain. 
I was their god. I was the lord of all, — 

Each step a new town or a plundered palace. 
I drowned a land with break of water wall ; 

Repeopled it, when kindness grew from malice. 
Who reckoneth all my crimes? 
He falls who climbs. 

" Of Babylon I made the stateliest city 

The earth has yet upon its surface known. 
Nation I fenced from nation without pity 

That all might wend toward Babylon alone. 
Tribe might not trade with tribe, nor north with south. 

But all must barter at my market centre ; 
Nor eastman speak with westman mouth to mouth 

Unless they first within my limits enter. 
Thus grew each tongue and art 
Slowly apart. 



32 The Vision of Nimrod. 

" But my own folk and all the priestly pack 

Grew fat with passage of the tribes deceived. 
Shameless were they ; they tolled from every sack, 

From each exchange a shameless moiety thieved. 
Shrewdly the dialects could they translate 

And turn each service to a wicked profit. 
Still was their care the tongues to separate ; 

At dullness in their victims still they scoffed, 
But I, to see them plod, 
Jeered all as god. 

" A vulture was my crest, with locust pinions ; 

Soon the unhappy tribes its meaning found. 
No signs of life my warriors left. My minions 

Seized, slew, burnt all or stamped into the ground. 
Less wise, more fierce than Kush, my glorious father, 

I heeded not the locusts' after state : 
They waste and rot, but the sick remnants gather 

And seek bare heights ere that it prove too late. 
Men, locusts — wheat or chaff — 
The grim stars laugh. 



The Visio7i of Nimrod. 33 

"Wastes are the home of flowers most aromatic ; 

Gums, savory fruits, grow from a rocky ground ; 
Arabian plains, wild deserts Asiatic 

Perfect a steed nobler than masters found. 
Ah, had I fled this folk, these plains luxurious, 

Reta'en the antique cliff homes of my stock, 
Prosperity would not have turned me furious, 

A sounder brain withstood the triumphal shock ! 
The flaming stars were wroth ; 
They lured their moth. 

" Among the peaks that round my fathers glistened 

Men are more godlike though their wealth be small. 
Would to my guardian spirit I had listened 

And turned me east, back to the world's great wall! 
Then had I lived a life of hardy leisure, 

With time to think, to govern well and brood 
On those high thoughts which form the only treasure 

That is not time's or swift corruption's food : 
Perhaps till these last days 
I should have praise. 



34 T^he Vision of Niinrod. 

" But, spite of crimes, spite of my wealth and glory, 

Of me what know ye, men of a puny age ? 
I am a rumor, an uncertain story, 

A vanished smoke, a scarce-remembered page ! 
The angry peoples showed they could be kinder 

To my great fame than after-following kings, 
For hate still kept a little sour reminder 

When every mark of me had taken wings. 
Whate'er on brick I traced 
My sons effaced. 

Yes, my own sons, for whom I bear these curses, 

Melted my statues, overturned my grave, 
Hammered from living rock the deep-hewn verses 

That from oblivion my vast fame should save. 
Thrice was this mass of brickwork, seamed with ravage, 

All newly builded by succeeding kings : 
What of the rage of desert-dwelling savage ? 

From sons a treachery far deeper stings ! 
Every one hundredth year 
Some man must hear, 



The Vision of Nimrod. 35 

" Must hear how they betrayed me, yes, and ponder 

O'er my great crimes, my splendor and my fall, 
How messengers from some great godhead yonder 

In vain approach, Nimrod from sin to call. 
I know not who he is, foretold by many. 

For on my mind weighs a thick cloud of doubt, 
Like fogs across these barren plains and fenny. 

So fertile once, they laughed at want and drought. 
List, though you shrink with fear, 
Tremble, but hear ! " 

How can be told the terror and the quaking 

Which on those lovers fell, when first they heard 
The giant spectre his confession making 

With many a groan and heart-confounding word ? 
But Gourred, in the warm embrace of Sayid, 

Was first to dare and whisper him of cheer. 
Whereat he, too, waxed firm and undismayed. 

" Nimrod," he cried in accents bold and clear, 
" Tell on, thou hapless ghost. 
All thy great boast ! " 



36 The Vision of Nimrod. 

The spectral limbs of him his lot complaining 

Grew denser as to lesser size he shrank. 
Then a rough voice to gentler accents training, 

His centuried silence to those hearers frank 
With joy he broke. Beneath his stark arms fluttered 

The windy robes that foglike round him swept 
Ever as still his ordered speech he uttered ; 

Thus, while the two closer together crept 
Fast, like a ship's blown sail, 
Ran the strange tale. 



Ill 



AHRAM FOUND 



Ill 



AHRAM FOUND. 



" Long, O barbarians, is my wordy story, 

For great the events which crowded all my reign. 
What though my path became less rude and gory, 

Still to the highest I did not attain. 
Wherefore my station, nor divine, nor human, 

Is now to live a dreadful death in life ; 
Nor yet a shade, nor given the strength to summon 

Myself once more ^o actual mortal strife : 

Where, o'er the sea of sand, 

Dust pillars stand 

39 



40 Ahram Found. 

*' There do I whirl upon the parched wayfarers 

A writhing form whose head is hid in cloud, 
Whose pitiless skirts have never yet been sparers 

Of aught alive they caught within their shroud ; 
But when the caravan lies deeply buried 

Beneath the wide folds of my sandy cloak, 
With a small mouth I slowly drain the worried 

Still-pulsing hearts of men whom pebbles choke, 
Ever to mortal brood 
Linked by that food ; 

" And ever doomed to still repeat the action 

Which most I loathe, bewail and now lament. 
I have no choice. An unwithstood attraction 

Forces me slay the men whom wastes have spent. 
Thus do I torments suffer far more horrid 

Than those of spirits that are burned in hell; 
They purge them of their sins in caverns torrid ; 

I, ever sinning, with fresh crlm^ must dwell. 
Smirched by an endless flood 
Of guiltless blood. 



Ahram Found. 41 

"Yet fear not me. The day that in ascendant 

That star is found named after me on high 
I know my crimes, I seek a true descendant 

Of ancient seers, and him with words I ply. 
So that he learn from my unholy doings 

The dangers of an all-too-powerful sway, 
Perchance the good of my heroic ruings 

May slowly leak into the wide world's day. 
Sayid, remember well 
All I shall tell ! 

" Earth grew too small for me ; I dared high heaven, 

And soon a chariot, cunningly made light. 
Stood yoked to eagles ready to be driven 

From earth on mighty wings in all men's sight. 
I took my seat. The eagles all, unhooded, 

Arose as if to meet the ascending sun ; 
But when so grievously they felt them loaded, 

This way and that the coward birds did run. 
Out was great Nimrod thrust, 
Rolled in the dust ! 



42 Ahram Found. 

" Then who durst laugh ? Only my runners trusty 

Whispered, that far in Ararat a tribe 
Of low-born shepherds mocked my journey dusty 

By falcons loosed with gross and shameful gibe. 
Wherefore I drew my myriad host together, 

And northward marched in silent, boding rage ; 
Hemmed in that folk so close, not even a feather 

Could slip from out my crafty-latticed cage. 
Savage and grim they fought, 
But all were caught. 

" Some to the block, some for the flames elected, 

Some to the lake, some to a living grave ; 
The rest — men, women, and fair boys selected — 

Were southward haled for me and mine to slave. 
Upon our march one stalwart captive ever 

Freshened the sad and cheered with counsel wise, 
Taught where to dig to find the vanished river, 

Read words of comfort on the star-sown skies : 
Ahram this leader's name ; 
Great was his fame. 



AhraTfi Found. 43 

" Him did I mark for death, a victim curious 

For that grim god who haunts Euphrates' plain, 
Him did I honor with a robe luxurious. 

Spices, wine, gold — eunuchs, a prince's train. 
Still by my stealthy gifts he would not profit 

But parted all among his suffering kin ; 
Held to his folk more ragged than a prophet ; 

Marched in their ranks, haggard, but clear from sin. 
Ahram at my right hand 
I caused to stand. 

" * Ahram,' I cried, ' what haughtiness of spirit 

Bids you contemn the gifts I deign to cast ? 
Have you no care my gracious smile to merit ? 

Do you not know this hour may be your last ? 
Say that you live, say that I curb my anger, 

Soon may a life snap like a weaver's thread ; 
Brittle as whirling wheels that burst with clangor 

How soon may not your stubborn soul have fled 
And with regretful shriek 
The dead land seek ? 



44 Ahram Found. 

" ' Wherefore it seems the part of one so wise 

To seize the momentary chance-flung pleasures, 
Stand by my chariot in a prince's guise, 

Help to crush nations and divide their treasures ! 
Born to command, what strange and childish folly 

Weds you to rags and this poor broken tribe ? 
Shake off, shake off unmanly melancholy 

And be my captain, vizier, priest and scribe — 
Else, lest too much be said. 
Look to your head ! ' 

" ' Nimrod,' quoth he, ' within the stars 'tis written 

How things shall terminate 'twixt you and me. 
You fatten me to form a victim, smitten 

For some vile god, bred of the tropic sea ! 
But for that god I shall not die. I know 

Too much of heaven and earth, the spirit land. 
Of dreams and portents and the murmurs low 

From magic trees, of jinns to deserts banned. 
Your hand shall you refrain, 
As from your brain ! 



Ahrmn Found. 45 

" * Without me vain will be your vast endeavor, 

But my strong aid all demons shall outwit. 
Your sons, without me, shall establish never 

Your royal line, nor in your chariot sit. 
Save me, who knows the rules whereby assemble 

The fateful stars that sway a nation's birth? 
Save me, who reads the meaning of each tremble 

Within the heart of earthquake-shaken earth ? 
Gems are but mud ; I own 
Wisdom's great stone ! 

" * Nimrod,' he spake, * know you what means the name 

Of Hero, and what fame the man inherits, 
Who wins thereto through paths devoid of blame, 

And gains therewith reward for lofty merits ? 
I am a Hero, not the same that you 

Have reached by conquests of surrounding nations, 
But one who's lord in realms withdrawn from view 

And makes clean victories by his godlike patience. 
Angels by him are seen 
Glorious of mien ; 



46 Ahram Found. 

" ' And all the past and all the terrible future 

Are known to him, darkly, yet far more clear 
Than e'er to priests who on your altars butcher 

Cattle or slaves that omens may appear. 
My knowledge now all other men surpasses 

Save two great seers, bowed by unkindly time, 
Who sit unmoved within the Eastern passes 

Of Caucasus, their beards congealed with rime ; 
They from disdain of speech 
No more can, teach. 

" * And would you know who are the earthly heroes ? 

Then seek the hater who controls his soul. 
What brow was calm, the day the whelming sea rose ? 

Within what breast do triple lifebloods roll ? 
Know you the man can lay his hand in passion 

Upon a bride, and yet from her refrain ; 
Who, full of hot desires, can daily fashion 

His tongue to virtue and his flesh to pain ? 
One who affronts affairs — 
Never despairs ? 



Ahram Found. 47 

" * Nimrod, the hero's not his own self-maker, 

He comes resultant from a thousand things. 
The anxious potter is a frequent breaker 

Of jars. Too seldom one is found that rings 
Perfect, and stands all sound and deftly painted. 

Just so obscure must families pass away 
Before one man is found in nothing tainted, 

Before their heaping virtues in one clay 
Meet — and some lucky morn 
A hero's born ! 

" ' Sad is that land where sons with foreheads brazen 

Withstand their fathers, and forget the meed 
Of service to the mother hands that chasten 

Their foolishness and froward wills at need. 
Great though the boasts of long-descended princes 

Their claims are worthless, saving when the folk 
Tables them in their hearts, and all evinces 

That love, not force, has kept them in their yoke. 
Only the house that's pure 
Long can endure. 



48 Ahram Found. 

" ' Now if we owe to our divine ancestors 

The larger good which comes to us at birth ; 
But to base parents half the sin that festers 

Within our breasts — much in a narrow girth — 
Whom shall we worship soonest, whom embellish 

With choicest gifts, though only a name remains ; 
Whom shall we feast, in hopes that they may relish 

Elixirs pressed from sweet and wind-blown grains? 
To the good parents' shade 
Hymns should be made 

"'And costly statues to such chiefs erected 

As made men by their works more glad and wise. 
They from the great the lowly have protected, 

Have been the loftiest in a humble guise. 
But as to gods — what know we of their favor, 

Hatred or scorn, their attributes or forms? 
Is not the human heart the true enslaver 

Of destinies, the raiser of all storms? 
Dumb, with unselfish ways, 
Give the gods praise ! " 



Ahram Found,. . 49 

" * Beware ! ' I cried, * tempt not the gods, O Ahram, 

Though you be wise surpassing man's degree ! 
Great are the dead, but fearful the alarum 

That sounds when demons rise revengefully. 
What harm can come from my august ancestors ? 

But dreadful is the sting that dragon wields 
Who wallows in the mighty swamp,. and pesters 

The slaves who till my rich rank southern fields ! 
Surely you work, as priest, 
Magic at least?'" 

" * Magic,' quoth Ahram, ' has its sovereign uses ; 

But if, so fond, of wizard craft you crave, 
.1 can expound its good and its abuses : 

Witchcraft is not for kings, but for a slave. 
Have patience, Nimrod ; if I seem obscure. 

It is my tongue that silence long has swollen ; 
It is my brain which has not pictured sure 

Dim phrases from my soul too early stolen. 
Trust through each new surprise 
Me, who am wise ! ' 

3 



50 - Ahram Found. 

"Yet more he spake. But I took little profit 

In words like those ; yet, won by slow degrees, 
I raised so high the leather-jerkined prophet, 

He stood erect when all men bowed their knees. 
Our converse was of matters great ; as, wonders. 

Quick flights of birds, strange tracks within the sand, 
Omens low muttered in the speech of thunders. 

Dull sounds perceived by them in mines that stand, 
Stars that have rolled the same 
Years without name. 

" Down the great stream now altered and deserted 

Floated for many a day our royal raft ; 
The while the slaves my braves with dance diverted 

Ahram exposed to greedy ears his craft ; 
But when within the blooming banks we entered 

Of vast canals around great Babylon, 
My thoughts, my heart on Ahram all were centred ; 

About his loins I cast my regal zone ; 
Upon his thumb I thrust 
My ring of trust. 



Ahram Found. 51 

" Listen the tale which Ahram oft recited, 

Which I have oft, in these sad centuries. 
Retold to prophets shuddering, yet delighted. 

Better have spoken to the passing breeze ! 
Too dull, too slothful, they have feared their fellows ; 

They dared not to the sneering world repeat 
What they had learned. They trembled at the billows 

Of vulgar bigotry ! Or priest, or state, 
Awed them with threats of shame, 
Tortures, the flame. 

" But listen, ye ! Perhaps the spark of rigor 

Is not all dead that once through Asia ran ; 
Perhaps, to free yourselves, you may find vigor 

To oust the impostor with his Alcoran. 
Receive from Ahram, then, his best possession 

Deep and abstruse, for overthrow of sin. 
Ponder it well. Here is the root-confession. 

Thus Ahram saw the forming of the jinn. 
Strain on my face your eyes ; 
Peace, and be wise ! " 



IV 



THE TARN OF KAF 



IV 



THE TARN OF KAF. 



" ' Far in the east where sacred hills aspire, 

Which you call Kaf and earth's most distant rim, 
Hides among cliffs that soar like frozen fire 

A hollow vale. Up to its ragged brim 
Are awful shapes pictured in solid stone 

Of every live thing which the soil has gendered ; 
But to the vale such souls can pierce alone 
As those whom years of self-restraint have ren- 
dered 

Simple and sanctified, 
Devoid of pride. 

55 



56 The Tarn of Kaf. 

"'Such was I once, such hope to be, O Nimrod ! 

And that is why, taught by an aged seer, 
I passed the shadowy straits and trod the dim road 

Of that gray vale deep in the crags austere. 
Alone I marched, bearing for every weapon 

One word upon my tongue, a word of might, 
A little word, which, said aright, will deepen 

The sun by day and lame the wings of night ! 
Down through those shapes rainworn 
I strode forlorn. 

" * On me from dim and time-bleared eyes they smilfed ; 

They grinned with mouths cracked by a million years ; 
They could not speak, nor did they move an eyelid, 

And yet I saw their hatred, knew their jeers, 
And slowly, slowly felt niy footsteps lagging 

The while a thought stirred in my trembling hairs 
How in my heart the life was oozing, flagging, 

Was giving way to stony veins like theirs ; 
Fear made my brain so numb, 
My lips were dumb. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 57 

" * For scarce the first great terrace had I threaded, 

Wheneas a longing quenchless-deep I knew 
To take my stand amid the figures dreaded 

Which, grim and sneering, from the rockbed grew. 
It seemed so wise to change the heat of toiling 

For cool hard veins like theirs, for dreams divine ! 
To know all things aright without once soiling 

A finger in life's filth ! to watch the brine, 
But never long to taste 
The bitter waste. 

" * Never round me shall close such heavenly mansion 

Of wisdom, as at touch of magic wand. 
Never again arrive the wide expansion 

Of brain that went with horror hand in hand. 
Truly, I said, too weak to aid the living, 

Too scornful of honors, I'll be rich in gain 
Of wit past all ! Here am I freed from giving 

My hoarded wisdom back again to men ; 
Wrapt in my thoughts sublime, 
I'll smile at time.' 



58 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" Ahram ! " (I cried) " to Nimrod came that seeming. 

Like you, I too believed myself divine. 
A thin domain was your vast land of dreaming; 

The actual world, its fields and towns, are mine. 
How fared you then ? was it forgot, your peril? 

Did you like me give way to selfish dreams ? 
Speak ! what rare gem of knowledge 'mid the sterile 

Sheer crags of Kaf unknown, unwitnessed gleams ? 
Say, did you farther win 
And see the Jinn ? " 

" ' The word, O Nimrod ! that was my salvation : 

The name no man may utter, save when death 
Stares in his face, when he that sways creation 

Wills that one live, not die of what one saith. 
That name is written, but in rock not graven, 

Nor traced in sand, nor digged in lines of turf, 
Nor built in walls, nor scrawled upon high heaven, 

Nor wreathed in loops of island-fringing surf ! 
Down in the ocean's deep 
That name doth sleep. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 59 

" * It sleeps. For though a word, it is a creature, 

And, as it lies, wound in its fold on fold, 
It is alive, and yet its coilings feature 

The word, the name of him who is not told. 
He willed, and lo ! the dragon where he slumbered 

Uncoiled him once, and with the movement drew 
The waters from above till they encumbered 

More lands, O king, than ever fell to you ! 
'Twas a great seer of old 
Saw him unfold. 

" * First came the ocean up the rivers charging 

Like foaming boars resistless in their rnight. 
And all the fields grew lakes ; their brims enlarging 

Drove the folk upward toward the hills in fright. 
Then fell the rain — not stol'n from out the sky. 

But dropt in sheer, all-overpowering masses, 
And what the sea had spared the torrents ply 

With hideous rush. As in the marsh the grasses 
Before wild oxen stoop 
The peoples droop. " 



6o The Tarn of Kaf. 

** * Regard an ant-hill which a summer freshet 

Surrounds at foot with ever-gathering waves. 
The busy crowd that watch the floods enmesh it 

Rush o'er the hill and in and out their caves. 
In vain. Inexorable, the creeping waters 

Climb the long slope that's now an island made ; 
Then of the soil those small and busy daughters 

In clustering mass the flinty skies upbraid 
Since, without knowing why, 
They all must die. 

" ' Such was the fate of men throughout these valleys 

And circling hills upon that day of doom, 
When, at the sounding of a Name, the chalice 

Of ocean overflowed, and all the gloom 
Of antique night came down to double fears 

In men aghast ; when at old ocean's foot 
Stirred the great snake that in his image bears 

A hieroglyph, of human script the root ; 
When the stars, blanching, heard 
That awful word. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 6 1 

" * 'Twas it first gave a clue to all things noted 

Upon the earth by every tribe of man ; 
For till that day the human speech had floated 

This way and that without a chart or plan. 
From that time forth speech was o'er space ascendant, 

And sound, though hushed, was conqueror o'er time ; 
Then wise men talked to their remote descendant 

By graven rune, by deep and pregnant rhyme. 
Nimrod, my tongue was stirred 
To frame that word. 

" * My lips but moved, and lo ! the spell was shattered. 

Light grew my feet as wings, and firm, clear-eyed, 
I passed on through those statues grim and battered 

And left them frozen in their sneers and pride. 
Down through a beetling pass I came unaided. 

Downward a perilous way from ledge to ledge 
Till the broad sky had nigh to twilight faded. 

Within the deep where hills together wedge 
A round black tarn did stare 
Dead as the air. 



62 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" * The eye of night, the womb of earth, the navel 

Of teeming worlds, but lustreless and blank ! 
Yet, as a stone in which magicians grave all 

The future dark in many an artful rank, 
That tarn was pregnant with the wisdom few 
Of mortal minds were ever made to cherish, 
And fewer still but half suspect a clue 
■ And key thereof ; but most men blindly perish 
Ignorant how they came, 
Whence, for what game. 

" * So there I stood, close to the very brink 

Of some gray secret in that mere profound. 
At what might come my flesh began to shrink; 

I trembled, as the sacred planes are found 
Shaking their palsied, tossing tops together 

Within the hush which runs before a quaking, 
When, in a sultry lull of rumbling weather. 

The demons of the rock a breath are taking 
Ere they together clash 
With dreadful crash. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 63 

" ' But down I crouched, mumbling the one word ever 

With eyelids rounded on that moveless mere, 
Lucid of mind, certain I would not sever 

My steps from there till all things should appear. 
The lake was brown and deep ; it looked congealed ; 

But in the depth fine crystals 'gan to form 
Dim, like a scattered caravan concealed 

Behind the sand veils of a desert storm ; 
Evenly all about 
Shapes started out — 

" ' Shapes that are not shapes, yet have life and motion. 

Join and disjoin, that make each other prey. 
Grow fat, absorbing by a slow attraction 

The mates with whom they seem at first to play : 
And, when too large, a fine wide cleft appears 

Across the shadowy and unshapely masses; 
They break in twain ; each side his own way steers. 

Then grows anew and through the same race passes. 
Marvelous, of deep import, 
Is that grim sport. 



64 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" ' Then through the dusky wave is seen a mountain 

Slowly arising in the tarn opaque, 
Troubled, as if its core were all a fountain 

Of rock ebullient underneath the lake. 
Great shapes like flowers about its top in cluster 

Sit as if quick and warmed upon a hearth ; 
And yet from out the rock no fiery lustre 

Shines from the bowels of mysterious earth, 
Neither does steam or flame 
Rise from the same. 

" ' But as the ocean under storm and shadow 

Forever changes, and the billows slant 
This way and that upon their barren meadow 

In answer to the east wind's varied chant, 
So does the mound, those wine-brown waters under. 

Glimmer and gloom with deep internal stress. 
Meseems that now a great and unknown wonder 

To air and sunlight is about to press. 
Slight is the foremost change, 
Subtle and strange. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 65 

" * The flowery bed about the summit growing 

Defines itself and sways as if it wills. 
Studded with myriad threads a purpose showing, 

Surely the groping mass existence fills ! 
Within the breathless lake they raise fine currents 

Upward and downward, till the solid mere 
Seems, having lost its former still endurance, 

To suck down bubbles from the atmosphere. 
So is the dry rock fresh 
With living flesh. 

" 'And slowly, slowly on the mound is motion 

In that confused and semi-conscious mass : 
A shaping is, to banners such as ocean 

Waves from its sunken cliffs in giant grass. 
Of these some bloom on writhen stalks and shaky, 

They spread wide bells in gorgeous-colored row 
Whose armlike petals whirl in movement snaky 

And that dark wave in many a vortex throw. 
Mightiest of all of them 
One breaks its stem 



66 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" 'And up It sways, glad of its new-found powers, 

With even pulsings through its jellied bulk, 
Then turns about and o'er the surface towers 

A domelike back, smooth, an amazing hulk. 
There hangs well pleased, the while its threadlike fingers 

Grope through the lake netting an unseen prey ; 
Anon it moves, hurries apart, or lingers 

Where'er it list within the hill-bound bay. 
'Twas liquid clay, congealed, 
Round like a shield. 

" * But from the crest of that submerged crater 

I saw great arms, each like a mighty snake, 
Reach up to clasp the mass of living matter 

And the wide disk in thousand fragments break. 
Below the spot a monster lay, so hideous 

That tongue may not its filthiness relate : 
A wreath of wormlike arms ; two dull, perfidious, 

Blue, glaring eyes ; a form swelled up with hate ; 
A hide that hardly feels 
Its cancerous weals. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 67 

" ' No bones it had. Those limbs did not belong 

To tremulous water, nor to earthcrust solid. 
Sans feet, sans wings, it poured itself along 

In oozy coils, and on its victim volleyed 
A mass of slimy arms with jaws all studded. 

These, on the desperate victim closing, sank 
Into his flesh. The limbs though lopped still budded 

With limbs anew. A horrible midmouth drank 
Its live prey, throe on throe, 
With tortures slow. 

*' * What found itself within those arms involved 

Left hope behind. The central mass was tumid 
With moving lumps that, swelling, then resolved 
Themselves* all smooth once more. The captive 
doomed 
Saw great bleared eyes, a puffed hide red and pale, 

And, if at sea, the waters all on sudden 
Turned jet with ink, or red with fire. No tail 
This ogre had ; weapons, nor stone, nor wooden, 
Brazen, nor iron could 
Draw from it blood. 



68 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" * Now if the former shape it quite devoured, 

Or by some change grew out of it, who knows? 
Brief was its own life, for a fish endowered 

With triple strength within the weird pool rose. 
All clad in frightful mail the fish ascended 

Out of the foam that monster's lashing made, 
And when the contest for the sea was ended 

Glad in his might the fish his pomp displayed. 
Proudly from rim to rim 
'Gan he to swim. 

" ' But still the mound increased with widening acres 

And soon its roof kissed the wild water's plane. 
The fish was gone, but through the fringing breakers 

Crawled such a shape as never salty main, 
Deserts, nor woods, nor crags that wound high heaven 

Contain to-day — a beast so huge and bad, 
The sight alone a nation would have driven 

To slay itself, stung with an impulse mad : 
Thence cunning lizards trace 
Their wicked race. 



The Tarn of Kaf, 69 

" 'About his neck when from the wave he rose 

Were coral gills, through which he sucked the vapor 
That filled the hollow vale. From stunted nose 

All down his back to where his tail was taper 
A fringe of wavy, blotchy hummocks shivered ; 

But while I gazed both tail and red gills shrank, 
Being useless, now the marshy island quivered 

Beneath his tread. A while the air he drank 
Through his vast yawn, and then 
Paced his domain. 

" * Bellowed the slimy thing, thereby assignant 

In echoes from the funnel-shaped high hills, 
Its lordship over all. In eyes malignant 

Glittered a thousand after-hatching ills. 
Within the roar there muttered a forewarning 

Of wars and murders, deaths in after-times, 
Of brutal ignorance and fiendish learning. 

Of thoughtful lusts and coldly-pondered crimes. 
Such was the rancor, it 
Its own tail bit ! 



70 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" * Reared on its hinder legs it marched in wrath 

About the isle freshborn from out the ocean. 
Gnashing long jaws at all upon its path 

And pawing air with strange incessant motion. 
Anon upon its body hard and scaly 

Began to grow a white and gentle down, 
And the forearms, which seemed at first all maily. 
Grew fledge with plumage gray, green, black and 
brown. 

Nimrod ! ' wise Ahram said, 
' I grew afraid. 

" ' For wings it longed, and wings it won. Distorted 

With fear of what might come I crouched forlorn. 
Behold ! the wings were spread, and up it sported 

As for the third thin element 'twere born. 
But on the island where its race had issue 

New births arose of ever-warring shapes 
And mighty plants, spongy and soft of tissue, 

Clad with gray verdure all the uplifted capeSo 
There giant reptiles stood 
As in a wood. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 71 

" ' Then on the isle was bellowing and commotion, 

Whilst one grim monster with another strove ; 
With tusk and horn the spawn of earth and ocean 

Their hideous strengths against each other drove, 
Till at the last a fearful beast was master, 

Amazing thewed, with fourfold, plate-like horns, 
Tushes that but to look on mean disaster 

And writhen trunk that every creature scorns. 
Loud she began to bray, 
Chief in the fray, 

" ' Whereat the reptile bird which far was wheeling. 

Far o'er the summits of the mountains stark. 
Drew down to view what rival had been stealing 

Upon his home within the island dark. 
He fell from high as tumbleth sheer a lavine 

Along the slopes of pure Himal'yan snow. 
Proud of his force, ready to make a ravin 

Of that slow beast which dared him there below: 
Then with their thunder-shock 
The isle did rock ; 



72 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" * And long they struggled, till his wing was twisted 
Beneath the tushes of that queen of herds; 

Then the vast weight descended where it listed, 
And crushed to death the greatest of all birds. 

So vast a bulk was that which won the tourney- 
Mere living things her life could not sustain ; 

Wherefore she browsed within the jungle ferny 
And stuffed her carcase with a pallid grain. 
Deep were her loins and wide, 
Stupid her pride. 

" ' Beneath the belly where the hide was folded 

A pouch there was, wherein she did bestow 
Her brood ere they to perfect shape were molded 

And cared for them with huge caress and slow. 
Her dream that they should hold the isle was blasted, 

For from the wood a smaller beast forth crept 
Whose sabre teeth of grass had never tasted 

But ever flesh from living bone they stripped : 
Roaring with voice of fear. 
Straight he drew near. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 73 

" * With hoofs, teeth, horns, began a conflict dire ; 

The greater brute in power was a king, 
But the lithe other, hot with fourfold fire, 

Was far more swift upon his foe to spring. 
The snarling, bleeding, rending and bone-crunching 

That there ensued can never all be told ; 
At last I saw the tiger-monster hunching . 

Across the neck of that beast over-bold. 
'Twas like a waterspout 
In days of drought 

" ' That whirls along the sea beneath a cloud, 

But, meeting once a sandy promontory, 
Empties its tons of water with a loud 

Concussant jar. Thus on the arena gory 
Fell the huge bulk, the largest that the sun 

Has seen, save one, or shall see looking downward, 
The clumsiest compound of all beasts that run, 

Swim, creep, or fly, that lurk in seas, or sunward 
Rear from the swampy grass 
Their 'mazing mass. 



74 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" ' For she contained within her bony box ■ 

The forces found in hundred later creatures : 
The horns of bulls, the teeth of river-ox, 

The legs of horses, and the diverse natures 
Of beasts that followed through the centuries. 

A clumsy pattern whence succeeding ages 
Drew many forms that frighten not^ but please. 

So, ever widening by progressive stages. 
Spread in that valley life 
Through endless strife. 

" * But all this while the air, the lake, the island 

Had suffered change. More perfect each was found 
The air was clearer, lake more fresh, and dry land 

Appeared where first was all a soggy ground. 
In place of fern and fungus woodlands towered, 

Within whose branches hid a manifold 
Bird, beast and insect life in leaves embowered 

Its varied tale of love and warfare told, 
Safe from that brute of guile 
A little while. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 75 

" ' But soon arose a tyrant in the forest 

In shape like man, yet was not man at all ; 
Right mild of sway and yet of strength the sorest 

If any dared to stir his angry gall. 
Amid the boughs his dwelling was. Delicious 

To him were fruits and water dipped with leaves. 
Great was his wit ; a sly beast and malicious, 

Working his ends by thought which force deceives. 
'Gainst the fierce tiger brood 
Great was his feud. 

" * There soon I spied them to the proof advancing, 

The crouching cat, the wily manlike ape. 
Whose great right hand a mighty beam was lancing 

With aim the tiger was too dull to 'scape. 
The timber flew, the wounded beast sprang shrieking 

Upon the ape ; but he, with heavy stones. 
Beat in the massive skull, a vengeance wreaking 

With flashing teeth and horrid growling groans, 
And him, though wounded sore, 
To ground he bore ; 



76 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" * To ground he bore the lithe and lovely peril 

And, shaking wrathfully the lifeless mass 
With broad long tushes, green as is a beryl, 

Into his mouth he caused the blood to pass. 
Short was his reign. For of his kindred others 

Opposed his sway. The island was a field 
Whereon great apes forever slew their brothers 

That unto them in wiliness must yield. 
Soon, on the apelike plan, 
Issued a man. 

" ' Till now the broods of fish and beast and bird 

Lived planless, still their daily wants sufficing. 
Now had a king of all of them appeared 

With forethought armed, by subtle craft enticing 
All living to their ruin, or to serve 

His own shrewd ends. He made so great a slaughter 
That hardly could the race of beasts observe 

What killed them. Fish with wood he slew, with water 
Drowned the dull cavern bear 
Within his lair. 



The Tarn of Kaf. yy 

" * The cunning brain that slew the greatest beasts 

Imposed on all a fierce incessant battle, 
From dry wood rubbed his fire, and at his feasts 

Treated his captives like submissive cattle. 
Beasts fly from beasts. By rocks and trees concealed 
They rear their young, they prosper, though they 
tremble ; 
But man so keen, so fierce a wit did wield, 
That no place served where quarry might assemble ; 
Quickly he followed, still 
The weak to kill. 

" * Weak though his force, by his unearthly guile 

All apes he beat, all birds and beasts o'ercame ; 
Then with his fellow man an endless coil 

Of fights, deceits and slaughters he did frame. 
Polished he grew, luxurious and conceited. 

And where before deceitfulness meant life, 
His brothers he from malice pure defeated. 

Forever mixed in fierce relentless strife, 
Where still the wiliest one 
Forever won. 



78 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" ' Then was it plain that he of all, alone, 

Each sound could imitate and read the intention 
Concealed behind an act. For he was prone 

To save himself by sly or bold invention ; 
And thereto framed an ever-varying code, 

A fruitful web of gestures and grimaces 
Whereto success in many a fight he owed, 

Wherefrom came aid in thousand perilous cases 
Now that with fellow man 
His craft could plan. 

" 'And whilst before by signs and guttural barks 

Men called to men ; now a most wise invention 
Of chanting tones the varying spirit marks 

With ordered speech, wherethrough a separate men- 
tion 
Each bird and beast receives, each tree, each wind. 

The mountains, lakes, the fruits and herbs and rivers; 
But those who spake right soon did leave behind 
Their duller foes. Who bent not to their wishes 
Was snapped as snaps a reed. 
Plucked like a weed. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 79 

" * Then faster, faster rose continual changes 

Till men there were so equal in their brain 
That each defends the forest that he ranges, 

Not safe, but ready to attack, maintain 
An equal battle, or by flight to 'scape ; 

And next began the luxuries to gather, 
The useless arts that good and evil shape 

In even measure. For great wealth is father 
To vice and to fine arts 
In equal parts. 

" ' But the small tarn that once was close and narrow 

Had grown apace into an isly mere, 
Where one kept flocks, the next made axe and harrow, 
Plowed, and from earth drew bread. And then 
with clear 
Brown ferment of his grain he brewed a liquor 

Stronger than what, from tender grapes out-pressed, 
A third man drank. In boats, still quicker, quicker 
Across the waves they forayed east and west, 
Fought, and made peace, and lied ; 
Wived, multiplied. 



8o The Tarn of Kaf. 

" ' Their manners grew so strangely complicated 

My wildered brain the cause in vain would ask 
Why this was done, not that : as, why they mated 

With that mate, not with this ; and why one task 
Gave health and strength, another slow extinction ; 

Why men that held them proudest fell most soon ; 
Why they were barren who had most distinction, 

And they bred strongest who were hardiest grown ; 
Why Use and sad Abuse 
Warred without truce ? 

" * Yet some grew wise beyond all human bounds 

And at their deaths, or violent, or peaceful, 
Out of the mouths of such, with moaning sounds, 

A Something fluttering, took on shape, or graceful 
Or else as bestial as those monsters grim 

That went before. Then well I marked their nature : 
The beauteous ghost was issuant from him 

Whose life had been of service to each creature ; 
The hideous bred in shoals 
From cruel souls. 



The Tarn of Kaf. 8i 

*' ' For there was seen amid the warring men 

That twain of spirits born from finer ether: 
The hater of mankind who loves to pain 

All creatures, he who has a heart for neither 
Virtue, nor youth, nor age, nor weak, nor foolish ; 

Of him did giant minds evolve the jinn 
With powers unholy and with aspect ghoulish, 

Dowered with strength through many a guile to win 
Luck from the good, and yet 
Endless regret. 

"'The other spirit was of equal force, 

But all his thought was how to cure the ailing, 
Succor the needy, and to arrest the course 

Of headlong miseries, support the failing, 
Aid the advance of prosperers, and joy 

In all things good. The pathways most laborious 
This fairy trod, for things which most annoy 

To him were sweet, absorbing, high, most glorious, 
Once their resultant stood 
For some light good. 

4* 



82 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" * But if I shuddered when that monster's wing's 

Grew out before, how did I shake and shiver 
When into space, as light as smoke outrings 

Spiral from tents, those jinns began to quiver 
Their pinions in the air ! Like boys possessed 

With horror of a spectre in the gloaming 
I girt my loins and upward madly pressed, 

Sure that I heard a rustling and a foaming 
As if the mere did rise 
Me to surprise ! 

" 'And as from tier to tier of hills I fled, 

Among the rocks I saw on either side 
Forms like the forms that through their lives had sped 

Before my sight. There lay, all petrified. 
The plantlike fish and fishlike plants, the true 

Life-bearing beasts, and, near the last high portal, 
Again those statues which had power to glue 

My hasting feet by whispers of immortal 
Bliss, if I did but dare 
To linger there. 



The Tarn of Kaf. Z'i^ 

" * One on a tortoise sat, and one within 

A shark's wide mouth ; a third form stood boar- 
headed ; 
A fourth, half lion ; and another's grin 

Was that of apes ; while he I no less dreaded 
Handled an axe ; the seventh was a bowman ; 
The eighth blew soundless on a magic flute ; 
The ninth, a saint of piety unhuman ; 

The tenth, a gay swain in a warrior's suit ; 
Each figure in its way 
Willed me to stay. 

" ' Why did I fly ? Mayhap it had been better 

With them my lot to cast. Then, Nimrod, you 
Had found me not, when that most grievous fetter 

About my nation cast resistless drew 
Our remnant hither to great Babylon. 

Alas, alas ! Who knows the best in fortune? 
Sure is but this : those demons would have won, 

Charming with spells that subtly can importune, 
Had not a now-lost face 
Pleaded for grace ! ' " 



84 The Tarn of Kaf. 

" Thus, O barbarians, Ahram told the tale 

Of life's progressive and antique creation ; 
Once only found he that miraculous vale 

In Himalaya, saw the jinns' evasion 
Once only ! What the strange recital meant 

How can I tell, a ghost who sees all blurry ? 
Yet 'tis of import lofty, and was sent 

To lesson me, to save me from the sorry 
Fate of my after years. 
Open your ears, 

" Open your ears ! Ere downy-footed morn, 

Warming the sky with beckoning rosy fingers, 
Has broke the dusk and from my shoulders torn 

What wretched simulacrum thereon lingers. 
Revolve what efforts at the first I made 

To keep the path of right, and how I faltered. 
But turn again when falls the evening's shade 

And hear my story out, no word being altered 
From the first sad refrain 
Of this old pain." 



V 



ESTHER THE VESTAL 



V 



ESTHER THE VESTAL 



" On these wide plains, which once stood all a-ripple 

With grain by strange-tongued, swarthy races sowed, 
I gave the remnant of wise Ahram's people 

A goodly portion and a guard bestowed ; 
But in my palace where the wealth of nations. 

Gems, vases, carpets, what the silk-worm spins 
Were thickly cast, the highest of all stations 

Was held by Ahram always clad in skins-. 

Counselor, treasurer. 

My key he bare. 

87 



88 Esther the Vestal. 

" How shall I count the works of public weal 

By Ahram fathered and my nations finished ? 
The fields reclaimed ? his superhuman zeal 

To plan canals and mighty dikes that 'minished 
Floods in the season of the Hyades ? 

On every side of Babylon the wondrous 
Are rivers deeper made ; the Indian seas 

Stretch to my quays of bronze, whereat the ponderous 
Whale and the desert ship 
A like wave sip. 

" But chiefly I sought, from him in wit abounding, 

To learn the future of the fateful skies. 
To see how soon a second flood, confounding 

These plains again, my kingdom might surprise ; 
For well I pondered how, before my sire 

Pushed westward, warring on ancestral foes, 
The sky fell down, the sea frothed up, till higher 

Than all the hills save Ararat it rose. 
Then were the nations found 
Like conies drowned. 



Esther the Vestal. 89 

" As god I moved, yet, prone to human errors, 

I longed to be from other gods assured. 
Evil foreknown is shorn of half its terrors 

And at the last with steadfastness endured. 
Should I an ark contrive, strong-ribbed, gigantic, 

Like those few souls who plowed the old whelming sea. 
Wherein to shut myself against the frantic. 

Wild spray of men that madly then would flee 
Upward ascending waves 
And unhewn graves ? 

" Or should I seize on all the Western regions 

And on their highest and most holy peak 
Plant me a temple whence my harnessed legions 

Should spread the earth's remotest bounds to seek? 
Or on the edge of my embowered gardens 

Should I cause grow a most enormous wall 
Of mortised stone with well-burnt lime that hardens 

With time the more, the more that showers fall — 
Thus, when the ooze waxed high, 
To keep me dry ? 



90 Esther the Vestal. 

" But then I feared, should I my kingdom alter, 

The robber hordes from past the Caspian gates 
Would sack my towns, leading my folk in halter, 

Trample my fields, level the fruit-hung dates. 
Or, if I built the wall, ten thousand wretches 

Would desperate climb along the rising flood 
And swarm like rats when some old willow stretches 

Its arm in pity toward the struggling brood. 
'Ahram,' I cried thought-wan, 
'Find me a plan ! ' 

" And Ahram pondered. At the last he claimed 

A year to seek the deathless truth, a permit 
For six months' counsel with the old and famed 

And six months' brooding as a mountain-hermit. 
I gave the year, and Ahram to my keeping 

Left his small tribe, his kindred and his flocks. 
I saw no spoiler through their lands went reaping. 

No hand of violence dared unbar their locks. 
Ahram was far away 
One year and day. 



Esther the Vestal. 91 

" Now in my train the eunuch Bitsu stood 

Chief of my household. His, to gather tidings 
Of distant wars, revolts, the secret brood 

Of thoughts of minds ambitious that have hidings 
In towns of strength. He spied upon the slaves, 

The thousand wives, the soldiers of my harem. 
At his least word a swift-foot runner braves 

The perilous waste, the hail-storm's dread alarum. 
Bitsu, once Ahram gone, 
Was quick to fawn. 

" ' King! ' thus he cried. ' God, to whom earthly nations 
Are dust, and whom the sky has loaned ! Great god! 

Is it your will that all the hid relations 
Of men submit to your approving nod ? 

king of kings, Ahram preserves some treasure 
Secret, rare, tempting, in his new-built town. 

1 have not seen it, but I know the measure 

Of wealth that he for that thing will disown ! 
'Tis a strange gem he saves 
Too great for slaves. 



92 Esther the Vestal. 

" ' Without your leave the vizier [who is greater. 

It seems, than Nimrod even] sent back men 
Of his own tribe, and put to death as traitor 

That chief who led us to his mountain den ; 
And then from out the valleys where the snow 

Lies half the year was brought this bulky jewel, 
Vase of fine metal, ark or idol, so 

Enchanting that no rare and costly fuel 
Burns on its altar stair 
Too rich, too rare. 

" ' Say but the word, and to an inner chamber 

Which no man sees, not even his tribal kin, 
My spearmen break, my nimble footmen clamber 

And from the town that secret we shall win.' 
But — ' Peace ! ' I cried ; ' tempt me no more ! I ask 

Of Ahram wonders deep and mind-perplexing; 
'Tis not for us to mar his god-like task. 

With greedy souls his little household vexing. 
Get you back whence you came, 
You and your shame ! ' 



Esther the Vestal. 93 

" He fled. When Ahram came, his shining forehead 
Told that the problem had been solved at last. ' 
I knew his brain contained the temple storied 

Should save the future and condone the past. 
Three days we talked, three nights and days great 
Ahram 
Told me the plan of his gigantic charm ; 
Three days and nights my wonder-stricken harem 
Watched without rest for sounds of joy or harm ; 
When, suddenly, east and west 
My runners raced. 

** 'Twas then I raised in Babylon the building, 

Trophy of conquests o'er the sky and earth, 
Whose gold the kings replaced by paltry gilding. 

Whose mimicked form but roused my hollow mirth. 
Fools that they were to try replace the hidden 

Wise, planet-reckoned secrets of that fane ! 
The demons laugh when fondly they are bidden ; 

Monarchs that wisdom lack must build in vain. 
Mine was the only one 
That favor won. 



94 Esther the Vestal. 

" Ay, many enigmas lay within the plans 

And projects Ahram drew for all men's wonder. 
And first it stood a symbol to the clans 

Of following epochs tliat the king, whose plunder 
Was drawn from every nation, could ordain 

A mausoleum such as Egypt's princes 
Had not to show on Nile's o'erteeming plain. 

It was the tomb for one who nowise minces 
Words, but whose lightest say 
Kings must obey. 

" But to the living world the fabric beaconed 

The fame of Kush, my father huge of arm ; 
Thus was inculcate, so wise Ahram reckoned. 

Regard for parents ; thus was raised a charm 
To save an impious city from o'erthrowal. 

Who saw at morn that land-mark 'gainst the sun, 
Sure of much offspring, won a rich bestowal 

Of flocks and grain ; who watched it, day being done, 
To him thrice profits grew ; 
His wives were true. 



Esther the Vestal. 95 

" So on this spot, to all the stars propitious, 

A mighty, square foundation was intrenched ; 
With blood from bulls, instead of slaves pernicious, 

Ahram in mystic rite the area drenched. 
Its basement was of rock and sun-baked brick, 

Square, wisely cornered ; it would hold a river; 
Vaulted it was and dark, with walls so thick 

No raging sea might ever make it quiver ! 
Window it had but one 
And always shone 

" Therethrough the north star red, the wise, the healthy ; 

Its ruddy eye forever pierced the murk. 
Fixing in magic chains those spirits filthy 

That in the bowels of earth uneasy lurk. 
This star alone forever holds his station 

Without one change which eye of man may see, 
A ruby pivot, whereon all the nation 

Of heavenly ones revolve eternally. 
Sublimest sentinel, 
He stares on hell. 



96 Esther the Vestal. 

" By cloudy nights, when all the sky was wild, 

The spirits black, the jinn, the elf, the devil 
Rode on the wind, the flowers of earth defiled. 

Tore at the tower and havoc played in revel. 
Should yet the north star, when the storm clouds drift 

By will of God a little way asunder. 
Drive but one gold dart through a fortunate rift — 

Back to their holes the swarming demons blunder. 
Fearing the diamond lance 
Of his clean glance. 

" If men dared creep therethrough by torchlight dim. 

They saw, low molded on the slimy walling, 
Monsters of hideous view, misshapen, grim. 

With grisly mien the stoutest heart appalling. 
Vast scaly beasts with eyes replete with loathing, 

Pale, flabby worms in tortuous intercoil 
And snakes like weeds a rocky cavern clothing 

Seemed the foul den with their foul skins to soil. 
And yet a strange cold smile 
Grinned from the pile; 



Esther the Vestal. 97 

" For they were glad, those figures worse than bestial, 

Though far too vile to care for aught on earth 
Save their own dross ; they loathed all things celestial 

And ate the spawn to which they gave a birth. 
Their lumpish limbs they rent from one another 

Where in a dreadful battle they were knit, 
Nor felt a hurt. Each bleeding dragon brother 
Fought with his stumps and though in death throes 
bit. 

Of them the sudden fright 
Would blanch hair white. 

" Into this square base from Euphrates led 

A deep canal o'er-vaulted all and hidden 
From light and men. By sluices great was stayed 

The rush of sudden waters, until bidden 
To flood the whole. A granite chest stood there 

Empty, but carved with all my wars laborious ; 
There, sealed in lead, my earthly frame should wear 

About it water and above a glorious 
Sky-reaching, marvelous tower, 

Sign of my power. 

5 



98 Esther the Vestal. 

" Then on the deep foundation thick and roomy 

Builded throughout by that short swarthy race 
Which tilled the marshes when my father gloomy 

His blood-stained triumphs from the East did trace, 
I caused seven of the proudest peoples 

Skillful with tools and forced to labors rude 
To raise this model of your mosques and steeples, 

This tower pyramidal and diverse-hued 
Which like the mountains hoar 
Steadfast should soar. 

" It was a mountain in itself. It told 

Of Eastern hills that gave my father being. 
On the long plains, which then far smoother rolled, 

It soared from earth as though to heaven fleeing 
Up from the squalor of the low-roofed town. 

Was the sun fierce, or came the wintry breezes, 
Still kept the tower, or at foot, or crown, 

Cool for the parched, or warmth for him who freezes, 
Just as, when seasons change, 
Hill-dwellers range. 



Esther the Vestal. 99 

" Then were Euphrates' face and all my borders 

Crawling with slaves who still my praises sung ; 
A hundred tribes obedient to my orders 

Hailed me a god in each conflicting tongue. 
No king might stay, however dread of power, 

His hand from laboring, despite his worth. 
Nor even might Nimrod's self withhold his hour 

Of work to raise the lordliest flower of earth. 
The architect approved 
But no hand moved. 

" Black was the first tier. Those were Nile-horse tamers 

Who baked the pitchy bricks and laid them clear. 
White was the next, whereof the smooth-limbed framers 

Were clean-cut Greeks from out their isly mere. 
Saffron the third ; only the endless treasures 

Of Indian kings such costly tint could buy ; 
To dye those bricks what unrecorded measures 

Of tender roots their husbandmen supply! 
These were the first of seven 
'Twixt earth and heaven. 



lOO Esther the Vestal. 

" My Medes and Persians then their necks submitted 

And toiled to rear a story all of blue. 
The mariners of warlike Sidon fitted 

Their share of porcelain red as blood in hue. 
The sixth was silver ; their fierce spirit broken, 

Iberians wrought it, from the sunset drawn ; 
The seventh was sheathed in gold and stood a token 

Of princes humbled near the gates of dawn. 
Each one was given two names — 
Honors and shames. 

" For each was sign of some great monarch's ravin, 

But each spoke, too, of a celestial star : 
My heavenly captains were the planets seven 

That rain down victory in each glorious war. 
About the whole a horse-shoe wall was builded 

Black, with one issue toward the southern plain, 
Whose inner face with hunting scenes was gilded : 

There lay a lioness by javelin slain ; 
A mountain cow lay here 
Pierced by a spear. 



Esther the Vestal. loi 

" Beyond, the workmen of my swarthy nation 

Had molded fine upon a pitchy ground 
The hill whereon the king his chase did station, 

The plain on which a varied prey was found. 
Above were seen the gentle birds of heaven 

Whom well-taught hawks on tireless wing pursued, 
Doves which the falcon from their nest had driven, 

And ducks whose feathers were with blood imbrued. 
These were the scenes which shone 
Within that zone. 

" But at the portal of those precincts holy 

Two figures crouched, of most majestic mien ; 
So cunning framed that they might bafifle solely 

The jinns which keep the land from growing green. 
Upon the right, hewn from one rock gigantic, 

There kneeled a bull ; but all his upper frame 
Was like a man's. The virtues necromantic 

Of this great charm all demons male could tame. 
On his tongue's tip alway 
One finger lay. 



I02 Esther the Vestal. 

" And on the left, over the way, was lying 

A mighty leopardess with sword-like claws, 
Yet woman all above. Now, she replying 

With gesture meet, yet different, gives pause 
With hollow right hand to her shelly ear ; 

And, while with rage the leopard claws are gripping. 
Her clear, calm, slumbrous-lidded traits appear 

To yearn for sounds all other ears outstripping, 
While her clenched left is pressed 
Tight to her breast. 

" Such talismans of watchful care and cunning 

Did Ahram found, so that no evil jinn 
Female or male, no hungry spirit dunning 

For ghostly food and prayers which lighten sin 
Should dare invade the temple of the fire, 

Which as a flame stiffened to brick and stone 
Still from a round hearth skyward should aspire, 

So long as issued from the bull no tone. 
And while that palm of her 
Never made stir. 



Esther the Vestal, 103 

" How frame the wonders, mark the heavenly traces 

To those who knew revealed within the pile ? 
So squared the basement was, alternate faces 

Looked eastward, south, west, northward o'er the 
plain. 
The strange huge shadow swung about the basis 

With tale of moons, of seasons, hours of day, 
An index vast, whose most entangled mazes 
My beggar architect thought out in play, 
Wherein he did disguise 
Truths of the skies. 

" Of gold and sunshine and of angels South 

The first fane argued ; of the North and glittering 
Moon-rays, the next ; the third, of sprites of drouth. 

Ruddy, by West all husbandmen embittering ; 
The fourth of saffron and of morning dyes 

Round the whole compass ; but the fifth, of heaven 
And upward height and blue from noonday skies. 

Downward and black, the lowest of the seven 
Did for all being fix 
Dimensions six. 



I04 Esther the Vestal. 

"And that fane sixtli, the greatest saving one, 
Betokened centers which have no dimension, 
Yet being, are. Weigh all the building's sum, 
And Ahram's subtle and matured invention 
Placed that as mid-point where the balances 
Would straightly poise, nor jog. — 

But why discover 
Problems, when things of beauty, sure to please. 
Crowd to a mind that runs with memories over 
While the tongue, rusty, trips 
Between the lips? 

" From right to left about the flashing mass 

Arose a spiral stair, the tower ringing, 
Whereon aloft my jeweled throne could pass 

As round the Polestar goes the dragon singing ; 
But on the crest — a glittering far-seen wonder 

Of jade, of amber and of facet-stone — 
With mine own hands I built to the god of thunder 

The sacred fane where he might house alone. 
With couch both soft and wide 
For his own bride. 



Esther the Vestal. 105 

" Her had my seer selected from his folk; 

She was the gem that hid within his dwelling ; 
A maid of spirit, never galled by yoke, 

By name of Esther splendid fates foretelling. 
With fearful oaths, by lightning-bolt and thunder, 

By evil gertii, by my father's beard, 
I swore no man her sacred zone should sunder, 

But always, high in the pure sky up-reared, 
She in the shrine should spread 
The air-god's bed. 

"Small was the care that Nimrod had for women ! 

Of wondrous queens too many I had known 
Eager to be my sport, my slave, my leman. 

Whose beauty well had won a separate throne. 
One after one I threw them by, disgusted, 

Yet the least glorious in these pygmy days 
Would shine like moons compared with targets rusted 
Beside the beauties whom ye moderns praise ! 
Esther was given grace 
To see my face. 
5* 



io6 Esther the Vestal. 

" Her veil was drawn. Ah, what a heavenly splendor 

Broke from her form upon my jaded eyes ! 
* Prophet,' I cried, ' 'tis well you did not render 

Account to me of this most glorious prize ! 
But I have sworn. Load her with gifts and station 

A woman's guard about the elected maid ; 
Bid that a herald to each subject nation 

Trumpet the name of her whom I have made 
Greatest of women ; ay, 
Bride of the sky ! * 

" She was so quiet ! Yet, methought, most thrilling 

That stillness was. And when each lazy sheath 
Sloped over eyes like opals, I was willing 

To swear her loveliest yet. But when beneath 
Shot out the startled radiance of those eyes, 

O, then she seemed no earthly, fleshly creature ; 
I stood aghast, lest toward the envious skies 

She might ascend before my hand could reach her, 
Draw her close, breath to breath, 
Once ere my death ! 



Esther the Vestal. 107 

" But no ! Though Iran could contain no woman 

Safe from my will, this single girl alone 
Had been reserved by vows so superhuman 

That far away from my embrace she'd grown. 
Strange are the deeds of love ! That my great body 

Should tremble leaflike at a captive maid, 
Should glow with rapture while a cheek grows ruddy, 

And at a frown turn anxious and afraid ! 
She and the seer of mine 
Were half divine. 

" Betwixt her brows Ishtar had set her seal 

Shaped like an oval mole. In other maidens 
Haply that mark a blemish would reveal ; 

Not so with her : it was in rhyme, in cadence 
With all her wondrous charm for joy and harm. 

Nor perfect was her figure, nor quite even 
The features of her face ; yet all was warm 

With such a look ! as if from glowing heaven 
Falling, to woman turned, 
The love-star burned. 



VI 



THE UPPER FANES 



VI 



THE UPPER FANES 



" But let me strive, although the night be waning, 

To tell by rote a portion of the scene 
That once shone here, though naught be now remain- 
ing 
In proof of memories of what things have been 
Upon a chosen, separate day those seven 

Tall stories, each with dark rites, were begun 
That from a subtile reckoning with heaven 
I and my peoples every ill might shun. 
Space was o'ercome. Superb 
Time felt my curb. 



112 The Upper Fanes. 

" And first we were the day's great wheel renowning : 

His shrine of gold, second to none in worth, 
The six times variegated stories crowning, 

Spired aloft far from the awestruck earth. 
To each there was a fourfold statued portal, 

Since four times seven the days of every moon ; 
Four doors, seven stories and the fane immortal 

Are twelve all told from monsoon to monsoon. 
Year, month and day and hour 
Stood in its power. 

" The four doors of the topmost fane were built 

Of glittering sunstone and of topaz golden. 
They seemed from far undecked, yet were they drilled 

With marvelous gravings. You had there beholden 
In delicate networks of incised lines 

Lions, bulls, boars, the shape of Behemoth ; 
In deep green emeralds there were pictured pines 

And banyan-trees of huge and vigorous growth ; 
Tongue could not name the swarms 
Of sun- vowed forms ! 



The Upper Fanes. 113 

" When first the sungod's matin eyes came beaming 

In at the eastern door of his own fane 
With hands of gold he touched fine harps, the dreaming 

Sky's bride to call from slumber's tangled skein. 
Above the cities of the plain the tender 

Evasive strains dropt gently from the sky ; 
The peoples knelt and toward that morning splendor 

Their cleansed brows and wide palms stretched on high; 
Low on the sun-gilt spire 
Burned Esther's fire. 

" Within the sun-god's fleckless habitation 

No altar was, no rug of any hue; 
All was clear glass, wherein by duplication 

A thousand-fold the sun himself did view. 
A single diamond window overhead 

Focussed his rays, just as he reached high heaven, 
And lit the sandal-wood which Esther spread 

To catch the bounty by the sun-god given. 
Yet did she never dare 
To enter there ! 



114 1^^^ Upper Fanes. 

" No woman might that holy fane invade ; 

But Esther, at the western doorway kneeling, 
Plenished each noon her fire, though sore afraid, 

Lest the great god, his soundless sun-bolt dealing, 
Should strike her dead. ' But when her torch was lit 

Up to her shrine upon the platform giddy 
Like frighted dove to dovecote she would flit 

With bated breath, with cold hands, feet unsteady. 
Then knew all Babylon 
That noon was on. 

" But when came evening with a rest from toll 

The hidden harps, gift from the Orient's princes, 
Rang out their music o'er the teeming soil 

To master worn with watching, slave that winces 
At cruel goad. Then tower-ward turned each face, 

Spoke litanies for me and for their altars. 
Against the powers of darkness begged for grace. 

Intoned, or whispered, as they stood, the psalters 
That sing how all men yearn 
For sun's return. 



The Upper Fanes. 115 

" Thus was appeased the first day of the seven ; 

The next belonged to her who shines most bright 
When stars are palest and the gloomy heaven 

Has lost all traces of the sun-god's light. 
The silvery moon that hunts when clouds are thick 

Within the shrine was bidden to her dwelling ; 
Moon that gives love, but empty all and sick, 

No sooner forming than at once dispelling, 
Quick as the mists that steal 
Past her white wheel. 

'* The outer wall in mansions eight and twenty 

Divided was, wherein low-graven stood 
Symbols of stars that drought portend, or plenty 

Of rain or wind, and formed a dial rude 
For the whole month. But inside at the centre 

A pillar rose of half-transparent stone : 
Should one at nightfall in that precinct enter, 

The mass with such unearthly pallor shone 
As if a lamp it bore 
Deep in its core. 



ii6 The Upper Fanes. 

" Of crystal were the jambs and lintels made ; 

The thresholds four, precious with jewels stranger, 
Were formed of moonstones that are used in aid 

Of those the moon has brought in secret danger. 
Sad are the maidens by the moonstroke blighted ! 

They rise from sleep, drawn by a hidden force ; 
Through perilous ways they stare ; they walk unlighted 

Like murderers mad with shadowy wild remorse ; 
Waking from hideous dreams 
With crazy screams. 

" But inward round the tier, all silver crusted. 

Fair wrought by captives from the western isles, 
A tale of grief was to the walls intrusted — 

How bootless love that heavenly queen beguiles. 
O'er hill and dale the fair was pictured flying 

To overtake her love with golden hair ; 
Her lover deaf, who wist not of her sighing 

And saw not, blind, the marks of her despair ! 
Then in a pleasant land 
She seems to stand, 



The Upper Fanes. 117 

" Where at the last her lover is o'ertaken : 

He lies upon a couch of spicy leaves ; 
But his sweet eyelids, though with kisses shaken, 

Will never ope for any wile she weaves. 
And farther on the artful western painter 

Had limned her flying back in sore dismay, 
Whereat the charm grew faint and ever fainter 

Until he woke and blithely hied his way : 
Thereat the queen renewed 
Her following rude. 

" And once again she's caught him ; but alas ! 

What deadly spite is this ? He cannot see her. 
Swiftly from sight her lovely form must pass 

Just when he waits and seems no more to flee her ! 
She waves her arms — alas ! he is unconscious ; 

Her bosom bares, but all her charms are naught ; 
She fain would shriek, but not a whisper launches 

From out the mouth of her with love distraught. 
Nay, than thin air her white 
Hand is less light. 



ii8 The Upper Fanes. 

" Thereby was seen where those Iberians savage 

A hunt had drawn. They showed with crafty skill 
Upon the youth a boar commit such ravage 

That all his life upon the grass did spill. 
Thereon was pictured how his heavenly lover, 

Stricken with anguish at his mortal pain, 
Above him, weeping, in the air did hover, 

Shrieked and implored for help — yet all in vain ! 
On her hard virgin breast 
Rocked him to rest 

" And mourned his loss with woodland ways of sorrow, 

With band of nymphs disheveled and forlorn, 
Satyrs in sackcloth and sly fauns that borrow 

For once a visage tearful, sad and worn. 
Within the cave he stretched, embalmed and fragrant 

As once he lay beneath the strange sleeping-spell ; 
Thither by night she turned her footsteps vagrant 

Her anguish to the rocks and woods to tell. 
Such was Fate's bitter boon 
To the pale moon. 



The Upper Fanes. 119 

"Whose was the third day and the third high story? 

Beneath the platform of the queen of night 
The fane was built for him who loves the gory 

Affronts of battle and the thick of fight. 
He is the god of that small angry star 

Red as the sky when sun in wrath is setting 
Which, most portentous of a coming war, 

Is cause of fame's and misery's begetting. 
These walls the blood-stained hands 
Of pirate bands 

" From Sidon faring stained with carnal juices 

Bright red like blood. The cornices within 
Were hung with targets, weapons for all uses, 

Trumpets that bray across the battle-din. 
The floor was all a field of grassy fire 

That flickered still, yet never lower burned, 
So true to life, the foot was lifted higher 

As if the lesson never could be learned. 
For 'tis a hot, quick fire. 
The war-god's ire. 



I20 The Upper Fanes. 

" And round about the art of skilled Phoenicians 

Had painted fresh the taking of a town. 
High on a tower a score of wan magicians 

Besought the planet on their foes to frown. 
Along the town-walls iron-souled defenders 

With boiling lead, with stone and spear and dart 
Fight with a useless rage that only renders 

The victor dire and adamant of heart. 
There, on the lower plane, 
A dreadful train 

" Of harnessed men strode on with leveled lances 

In windy rows, as when the pulsing breeze 
Bows into even ranks as it advances 

The wintry tops of glittering ice-bound trees. 
They storm the wall ; they swarm at every angle ; 

They cut and thrust ; they fling the quenchless torch ; 
Though arms are lopped, their teeth the foe can mangle 

Reckless of how the gathering flames may scorch. 
Beyond, a stately fleet 
The sight did greet 



The Upper Fanes. 121 

" Where too was battle and a dire commotion : 

Against each other like to mad bulls ran 
The myriad-footed galleys. All the ocean 

Was full of wrecks as far as eye could scan. 
Here lay two hulks, whereon a tide of seamen 

Flowed to and fro in grapple desperate ; 
There, on a captive merchantman, the women 

Destroyed themselves to escape a terrible fate. 
The sea with blood is red : 
Countless the dead. 

"Next there was limned a plain encumbered densely 

With horse and foot, with chariots flecked with gore, 
O'er which there hung the horror that intensely 

Grips at the nerves in hushes just before * 
The jar of battle. Eyes might hear the moan, 

The hideous crash, the carnage- and the madness. 
With broken armor all the field was sown 

And through it stalked the war-god, smiling gladness. 

Sucking some grateful death 

With each new breath. 
6 



122 The Upper Fanes. 

"The doorways to the shrine of Mars had erches 

Of spotty bloodstone, while each pillar's head 
Was formed like skulls of wolves that dog the marches 

Of wounded braves. Rubies of gleaming red 
These had for eyes, and on each bare skull stood 

The red-pate bird that startles the lone forest 
With taps like drurn, when against fields of blood 

The dogs howl loudest, wives are weeping sorest : 
Such was the grisly fane 
Of man's great bane. 

" Now underneath, unto the fourth day given. 

Spread out the temple of the tiny star 
Which never frankly shines in midmost heaven 

But hides its head before the god of war. 
Blue was the house that planet, the dissembler. 

The slippery one was bidden to invade ; 
A merchant race, for merchandise a trembler. 

The far-fetched tiles of sky-sprung azure made. 
Tiles by the folk designed 
Of farther Inde. 



The Upper Fanes. 123 

" The hall within was lined with diverse metal 

Whereon by craftsmen were sly pictures sealed 
With fire in low relief; thus: men who settle 

A barter, and, their perjuries revealed, 
Make off with ill-got gains ; . a subtle thief 

Who crawls upon a campment in the dawning 
To steal a blood-horse, but when caught reprief 

Obtains by witty lies and crafty fawning. 
Such were the scenes applied 
To the east side. 

" Along the north stretched out a snowy region 

Wherein lithe youths were sweating at their play. 
Made mimic war between each mimic legion 

And trained their bodies all the livelong day. 
O'er snow, near by, one saw a file of deer 

Were swiftly drawing cars of merchandise 
And farther on the courts of towns appear 

Where orators lead captive all men's eyes, 
Swaying the mobile throng 
Toward right or wrong. 



124 '^^^ upper Fanes. 

" Upon the west was made a sea in motion 

With tossing ships careening to the blast ; 
Adventurers were seen appeasing ocean 

By costly presents on the waters cast. 
Not far away there rose a range of hills 

Where men for ores, the furnace melted, burrow ; 
Here for a heavy crop the sand they till 

And there the beds of empty streams they furrow, 
Even as my Median bands 
Searched the far strands. 

" And furthermore, the southern wall adorning, 

In caravans from torrid climes are seen 
Beasts and strange birds, men who are all men's 
scorning 
For monstrous shape, for fierce or puny mien ; 
Men of vast strength, men of a baby's size, 

With heads too great, or feet like elephants. 
Serpents in baskets, many a brook-won prize 

Of glittering gems, healing and hard-found plants ; 
Bark from envenomed trees 
Which cure disease. 



The Upper Fanes. 125 

" The ceiling was a miracle of art 

With sapphires deep and palest turquoise blended. 
A sky was there, whereof one cloudy part 

Was milky quartz ; as if a storm had ended 
Across the darker clouds was drawn that bridge 

Of wondrous hues whereon the sky's great father 
Sends earthward fast his messenger as pledge 

That for a time his wrath shall cease to gather, 
Revenging fast insult 
With lightning bolt. 

" Like palm-trees were the pillars of the gates 

Of this lithe god, around the which were tangled 
Wise serpents topaz-green ; each one his mate's 
Mouth, tail and middle touched in peace, nor 
mangled 
With teeth his friend. Thus was the fane. Far greater 

The shrine below, for o'er each august portal 
Was shaped in ebon the strong serpent-hater, 
The eagle which if not slain is immortal, 
Nor e'er is dying found 
On the earth's round. 



126 The Upper Fanes, 

For eagles that as nestlings learn to gaze 

Deep in the eye of the great world-reviver 
And are destroyed unless they stand the blaze 

Unwinking; eagles are their own depriver 
Of outworn life. When beak and claws are grown 

So crook, they cannot rend or strike the quarry. 
Sunward in tempest towering, sheerly down 

They dash upon the ocean ! and a sorry 
Featherless, shapeless form 
Sinks in the storm. 



VII 



THE LOWER TEMPLES 



VII 



THE LOWER TEMPLES 



" Could you have passed the gateways of the story 

Third from the earth, vowed to the great fifth day, 
It would have seemed that in an oak-grove hoary 

With age, yet lusty, chanced your feet to stray. 
The ceiling seemed with leafy boughs bespread 

And upper walls with mighty tree-trunks dense ; 
But underneath on carven screens were read 

Tales of high prowess, victories immense 

O'er the astounding, rude 

Titanic brood. 
6* * 129 



130 The Lower Temples. 

" The place was sacred to that royal star 

Which sails majestic through supernal ether; 
Of mighty force to help the earth or mar ; 

The cloud-compeller, the white mountain-wreather, 
The thunderer in hail-storm or in rain, 

The god whose voice is heard in wailing branches, 
Who, toying with the crocus on the plain, 

Shakes the hill- passes with his avalanches ; 
Who levels towns, who stirs 
Ripe chestnut burrs. 

'' And there along the wainscot, deftly graven, 

Were banqueters who smiled above a feast : 
Here sat a king; there priests with crowns all shaven 

In shape of sun or moon. The royal beast 
Lay there as watchdog to the throne, the lion. 

Before them filed an army, one array 
Of pompous pride, and at their head the scion 

Of kingly line his mincing horse did play. 
Such was the festal sight 
Upon the right. 



The Lower Temples. 131 

" But let me tell you how the gates were framed : 

Of amethyst the southern door was builded, 
Friendly to drunkards of their vice ashamed. 

With yellow sards the northern posts were gilded. 
Upon the east stood pillars of dark jade, 

Concealing, half revealing crafty gravings. 
The western doorway was of loadstone made 

That draws from far metals in slender shavings 
Even as the sun draws still 
Earth's every hill. 

" To left the ranks of royal oaks were broken 

By olive groves ; on panels of dark wood 
Stood fields of tender grain but late awoken 

From wintry sleep, and next in furrows stood 
The eldest of a band of husbandmen ; 

Up to the clouds a grateful hand he lifted 
In thanks for purging wind and gend'ring rain 

And with weak arms a mimic snow he sifted 
Of seeds in hope to please 
The lord of trees. 



132 The Lower Temples. 

"But on the next wall was a dire contention 

Between the generous god and those rude sons 
Of chaos and commotion. Deep invention 

Can only stem the force that, like to tons 
Of mindless stone, their swollen bodies wield ! 

The god of rain was pictured with his lightning 
Streaming resistless o'er his awful shield, 

The sheen whereof, all lesser giants fright'ning, 
Drove to their former berth 
In heart of earth. 

" Yet farther on was seen the first great forming 

Of iron weapons. From the mountain side 
The god had digged the ore, and fashioned, warming 

In lambent flame, a sword so sharp, hard, wide. 
The tooth of time it blunted. 

On a tyrant 
The blade he tried. The latter fled away, 
Dropping from nerveless arms the last aspirant 
To his old throne, an own son ; them to slay 
Always had been his wont 
Before that brunt. 



The Lower Temples. 133 

" And he, of his own offspring the afiflicter, 

Was honored, too, in seventh and lowest tier ; 
But mighty lay betwixt him and his victor 

The shrine of her who dulls the wargod's spear, 
Strips of their pride divinities the greatest, 

Humbles to dust the careless, snubs disdain — 
A goddess who, if earliest not is latest 

And in the hearts of graybeards still shall reign. 
She who within her sphere 
Has not a peer. 

" Whom do I mean save Ishtar ? Nimrod even, 

I, hard-thewed hunter, at the last was crushed 
Beneath her ivory heel. Within that haven 

All noises rude, all voices rough were hushed. 
Cooing of doves, the amorous cat's soft purring 

Were there allowed, but of the voice of men 
Only those mellow with the heart's deep stirring 

Echoing about the murmurous chambers ran. 
List how to earth that flame 
Of white love came ! 



134 The Lower Temples. 

" It was in spring-time, in the world's fair morning, 

When gracious, fickle and alluring sea 
Yearned for still earth with such deep-rooted longing 

That stirred at heart was her immensity. 
From every part the ocean drew her finer. 

More spiritual essence into foamy wave. 
Whereof the allied winds became refiner, 

And, far by south, to one close spiral drave, 
Where lay, as though in bower. 
The world's one flower — 

" Ishtar the white, the rosy, the transparent. 

Her fragrant head was pillowed on a hand 
Cunningly 'twixt her yellow locks apparent 

As smoothy milkstones hide in golden sand. 
Her dimpled elbow on the wave reclining 

Gave to her weight a little, but no more ; 
Her sun-bright tresses were not wet but shining 

With humid kisses of the dark-green floor. 
Her counterfeit could move 
To dreams of love. 



The Lower Temples. 135 

" That was great Ishtar's making. Phrygian Greeks 

Engraved her thus within the marble palace 
Sixth from the top. For hers is still the week's 

Sixth day amongst you. Half within the chalice 
Of one wide-petaled lotus-bloom she lay ; 

About her sported dolphins ; through the billows 
Bending before her they did steer their way 

And drew the goddess on her perfumed pillows. 
There the clear marble stone 
With soft hues shone 

" Not painted, but in darkness fashioned slowly 

Within the heart of subtly-shaping earth. 
The craft to cut that stone had vanished wholly 

Long years before ye moderns had your birth. 
The floor of Ishtar was of stone so clear 

It looked a sea, a still lake or a mirror 
Wherein inverted did the fane appear : 

The entering novice was at first in error 
Lest in a cool wave's lip 
Her sandal dip. 



136 The Lower Temples. 

" And here and there upon the walls were chiseled 

Most lifelike groves of myrtle, rose and peach ; 
Apples of love, pomegranates which to grizzled 

And languid age a youthful vigor teach. 
Among their leaves were sparrows ; swans and doves 

Were mimicked well along that pooly mirror ; 
The bird was there that all too fondly loves 

Its absent mate and dies of lonely terror. 
In the wide lintel's cope 
Its eye did ope 

" One rose- white jewel set with pearl and beryl 

Yellow, white, green, whereof the shifty sheen 
Was told again within the waters sterile 

Of that false pool. The opal great, I ween, 
A symbol was of love that hides from sight, 

Yet burns the hotter still, albeit hidden ; 
And in strange ways and devious comes to light, 

Arrives, goes, turns, and goes for good, unbidden : 
For love a deep touch-stone — 
Ishtar's alone. 



The Lower Temples. 137 

" Hers was a fane the greatest of all others 

And lowest too, save that of Father Time, 
The shrine of Saturn, the hoar god who smothers 

His infant sons in fell destruction's slime. 
Because the rest are Ishtar's slaves : the master 

That moves the sun, the empress of the moon, 
The war-god fierce, the god who dreads disaster, 

The festal banqueter who loves high-noon — 
All who have come to earth 
Through seas of birth 

'* Must deal with Ishtar beautiful and dread j 

Behind her couch like beggars they must station 
Till in her oval mirror she have read 

Their fates in love. Now even such probation 
Portrayed was there. Upon a bank of snow 

With red raw feet was such a suitor standing. 
He trembled much and on his hands did blow. 

Frozen or parched at Ishtar's light commanding. 
Hot, cold like snow, in turn 
Her love doth burn. 



138 ' The Lower Temples. 

" But vaster yet were portals deep and roomy 

Of agate, onyx and of serpent stone 
Which frowned about the temple black and gloomy 

Where Saturn brooded, molded on his throne. 
About his nape his arms were sadly twined. 

His face was hid. A few locks white and scattered 
Hung down between. To desperate change resigned 

He crouched like one with whom they little mattered, 
Things on the old earth's ball, 
Great things or small ! 

" All wrought in fired earths, his back so broad 

Shored up, it seemed, a main wall of the tower ; 
So, should he come to life and seize his sword. 

Which like a sickle moon in her first hour 
Shone by his side, the fabric o'er his neck 

Had split right through. Then all the shrill gods' 
chiding 
Had not availed to save their homes from wreck, 
Nor all the strength within their spheres residing 
Prop for a moment's tide 
Their ruined pride ! 



The Lower Temples. 139 

" Above his head a cypress wreathed gaunt arms 

Whereon there sate an ancient raven pair ; 
Into his ears these gray birds croaked their charms : 

One told the future and kept green despair 
At loss of just such days as still the other, 

Memory by name, recounted croak by croak. 
He seem'd to long the actual day to smother, 

Live yesterday, to-morrow's tide invoke, 
Rather than bear the sour 
Present's dark hour. 

" About the four sides of this empty shrine, 

The wall's foot and the doorway lintels lining. 
Ran a strange rounded beading, whose design 

Was slowly seen, until at last the shining 
False eyes of one huge snake revealed its form. 

Around the fane it stretched, until o'ertaking 
Its own thick tail, the motionless gray worm 

Laid fast thereto. Above, through jungles breaking. 
Were elephants whose feet 
'Twere death to meet. 



140 The Lower Temples. 

" Now in the space betwixt the tower and wall 

Of horseshoe form that round about was builded 
There stood a sacred grove, wherein grew tall 

The windy hill-pines, whose long cones were gilded 
To catch the sun's glint. On the other side, 

A clump of granates, every apple covered 
With silver like the moon's. These grew the pride 

Of twice six priests elect, who always hovered 
With careful guard around 
The holy ground. 

" A well there was deep sunken in each grove, 
Of virtues sovereign and of magic seeming; 
That of the sun among the pines did prove 

Most strange by night. For then there glowed a 
gleaming 
Deep in its entrails, as the tube it were 

That star-men point against the glittering fires ; 
Therethrough the sun, though lost to upper air, 
Could still be seen, the while the moon aspires 
And sheds her still white rain 
Across the plain. 



The Lower Te7nples. 141 

" That other spring, bubbling among the apples, 
Was all the moon's, and greatest was its might 
When quivering heat from off the moist land dapples 

,The noon horizon with unsteady light. 
Then, were the moon far wandered from the sky, 

A sheen of silver in the darksome water 
Pledged her return ; she was not lost for aye, 
But to the votary rightly that besought her 
Would tell what bridal bed 
The fates would spread. 

*' The twelve priests of the sun and moon were clad 

In robes of separate hue, therein enwoven 
Celestial signs. A mystic rite they had, 

The sacred mold with golden mattocks cloven 
To plant with grain, the crop wherefrom they gave 

To all men of the earth because 'twas holy. 
Landsmen from far the sacred seed did crave 

And pilgrims fared to Babylonia solely 
A handful to obtain 
Of lucky grain. 



142 The Lower Temples. 

" There had you stood in bowery Babylon 

And gazed afar at that my loftiest wonder ; 
You had conjectured of the secrets done 

In stone and brick the flashing tier-tints under. 
The sun and moon shrines were my royal head ; 

Mars was the courage in my breast residing ; 
Mercury for my active heart stood stead : 

Four greater gods were thus my frame dividing; 
But the dread upmost shrine 
My crown divine ! 

"My lower man was symboled by the three : 

Jupiter, Venus, Saturn the deep-brooding ; 
Symbols they were of the v/ide-searching sea. 

The two above, to my broad chest alluding, 
Stood for the air. The still superior ones 

For fire ethereal, that to which inferior 
Is air and shines the brightest in the sun's 

Omnipotent, all-gendering, deep interior. 
Thus sprang the cone-shaped god 
Up from the sod. 



The Lower Temples, 143 

" A dreary secret has not yet been told. 

Unknown to Ahram, at the eunuch's bidding, 
With murder every story was befouled, 

This place seven times by guile of Ahram ridding. 
Bitsu had caused of each land one chief man 

In brickwork to be walled, unfed, unwatered. 
Ahram for all the wisdom of his plan 

Heard not, absorbed, how the dry mouths of slaugh- 
tered 

Chiefs, their far countries' pride. 
For vengeance cried ! 

" It was an ancient custom of our land 

Which Ahram cursed. Yet Bitsu showed me clearly 
How their seven sprites like guardian souls would stand 

Within their live entombments late and early. 
Alas, 'twas they who Lured the foulest jinns, 

Wind-devils, demons and the ghosts uncanny 
•Whose clawlike hands could grapple where my sins 

Had left within the pile too many a cranny- 
Still shouldered out more wide 
By those inside ! 



144 ^-^^ Lower Temples. 

" 'Twas done. East, west, north, south the humbled 
nations 
Departed, dazzled by my godlike pride. 
My fame was blown to earth's remotest stations, 

To seas remote and farthest mountain-side. 
And as in bands they fled, their labors ended, 

They saw my throne, bright with the jeweled glare, 
By all the pomp of Babylon attended 
Ever ascending by the spiral stair : 
Curses in many a tongue 
Backward they flung. 

" I heard them not. I only marked the gleaming 

Of countless cities and the endless chain 
Of slaves and booty-laden camels streaming 

From every land o'er the deep Shinar plain. 
On high I saw the radiant vestal beckon 

A brother god toward the celestial house. 
Was it so strange that I should lawful reckon 

Whatever passion in my breast might rouse ? 
The pile which tortures built 
Was used for guilt. 



The Lower Temples. 145 

" Before the threshold of the sun I bade 

The pomp cry halt. Then from my dais golden 
Leaping, alone prostration short I made 

To fire directly to the sky beholden ; 
And all alone I scaled the highest peak 

Where Esther stood in robe of many colors, 
The hues whereof should fright the jinns who seek 

To plague that holy one with spiteful dolors. 
Wrapped in her priestess-hood 
Fair Esther stood. 

" Know you how Spring ascends the mountain valleys 

In fragrant dances on the line of snows. 
Enrobed in wind half-cool, half-warm, that dallies 

With vineyards now, and now by snow peak blows ? 
When vernal hills are green with dainty guesses, 

With hope, with promise of delicious pain, 
And sun from udders of the glacier presses 
The foamy milk, life to the thirsty plain — 
Know you the zest that fills 
Spring in the hills ? 
7 



146 The Lower Temples. 

" Thus did it seem before the glowing face 

Of Esther, captive-slave and priestess-royal, 
In whom such keenness and such zest held place 

With natural genius. And then first did loyal 
Untainted thoughts for any woman rise 

Within my cynic breast. 'Twas not embraces 
I longed to win, but that in scornful eyes 

I might perceive of tenderness the traces — 
Yes, what none else should see, 
All meant for me ! 

" She did not kneel. With looks that were a threat 

She held of that most sacred shrine the portal ; 
Her head was godlike on her shoulders set 

With poise indignant. Through her "flowing kirtle 
Shone a white knee that would not bend, though I, 

The mightiest lord of earth, were there approaching ; 
Her blue-black silken hair about did fly 

With kisses soft on clear white cheeks encroaching ; 
Anger more lovely made 
This wondrous maid. 



The Lower Temples. 147 

" Ah, little know ye, this lean shadow seeing. 

The splendor of my port in that brave time ; 
My stature grand with haughty look agreeing, 

My regal gait, my awful nod sublime ! 
Esther was human. Could she fail to glow 

At such as I was? Could she keep from dreaming 
Of power like mine, of all I might bestow ? 

Could she restrain her restless brain from scheming 
Triumphs that lay so near 
Her own career? 

" ' Nimrod ! ' she spake, in low voice ill-compressed, 

* 'Tis well you come. Your slave has made good trial 
Of all this office. Blandly your request 

From Ahram came, backed by the mandate royal. 
To him naught say I, but to you, the head. 

Whom less I fear, albeit no less I'm humble. 
To you I say: Spare me this golden bed. 

Never again at lots obscure I'll grumble 
So that you set me free 
From hence to flee. 



148 The Lower Temples. 

" ' I am no priest or seer ; I am a woman 

Used to dear friends, to gossips, daily tasks. 
Why should I house alone, or with inhuman 

Faint spectres whom the incorporate ether masks ? 
Ahram but did your bidding. Oh, too well 

He knows the mind to sway with turnings specious— 
This is not life,' she cried, * or else a hell 

To one like me that finds an hour more precious 
Which eyes of love have known, 
Than years, alone ! 

" ' Why should we women always live in fetters ? 

Why am I not a man, to come and go ? 
All men save one are equals, not my betters : 

As hot they find the sun, as cold the snow. 
What is this sex ? A. bugbear used to frighten 

Poor women into servitude more base ! 
Oh, hard are men who do not seek to lighten 

The burdens on the weaker of their race ! 
Yet, though I bend to might, 
Death may set right 



The Lower Temples. 149 

" ' The grievous wrong that you and Ahram do — 

O Nimrod, look me in the eyes and listen ! 
I swear by him who reigns within the blue 

And her whose locks by all earth's rivers glisten, 
By gods above the air, below the ground, 

Your father's grave and by your beard most royal. 
That, self-slain, as a spectre I will hound 

You, Nimrod, to destruction, if denial 
Of my petition slips 
Your fateful lips ! 

" * I am alone,' she wailed, ' lone on the summit 

Of this luxurious pile, more sad and poor 
Than girls in hovels whose dull pulses quicken 

When well-known fingers grope against the door. 
All night I lie among the embroidered pillows 

And hear the wind howl in the gates of brass, 
I see it wave my robes like even billows 

On Tigris when the south wind stamps the grass. 
Cold, Nimrod, is the side 
Of your god's bride. 



150 The Lower Temples. 

" ' Liar ! 'she cried, * am I to waste my daytime 

And bloom because you're king and choose to say 
This god exists, or if he hves, his playtime 

To such as me will stoop to give away ? 
Let me go hence, back to my hoary father ; 

Bid Ahram lead me to our sterile home, 
Once more to live in tents, once more to gather 

The hardy flocks that o'er the hillsides roam. 
Our chiefs tempt not the skies — 
And tell no lies. 

" ' Think you,' she raged, ' I fear your godlike power 

Or tremble as I seize your sacred beard ? 
Behold, I care not if from off the tower 

You cast me ! To the last I still shall gird. 
What have I done, that no sweet craving fingers 

Shall grasp this barren and ungracious breast ? 
Without a son who o'er my ashes lingers 

How shall it be when I have sunk to rest ? 
No one with gifts will bribe 
The demon tribe. 



The Lower Temples. 151 

" * Another priestess for this pageant summon 

And drive me hence, I care not how forlorn, 
So that I see again the pathways human, 

Wed and be gay, bear, as I once was born, 
And hear my children cry, laugh, sing and prattle. 

Look how I rend my gold-embroidered vest ! 
Thus, Nimrod, king of kings and lord of battles. 

Thus may your kingdom fare, if my request 
Falls on a deafened ear. 
Hear, Nimrod, hear ! * 

" How could I chide that loveliness unruly ? 

No god, I knew, could look on her unmoved ; 
Wherefore I was ashamed and glozed untruly. 

Faltered, spoke soft, pleaded while I reproved. 
Then from my neck I raised the chain of coral. 

Whereon there hung my wondrous egg-shaped pearl. 
Pearl that had force to soothe the fiercest quarrel, 

Pearl that was torn from out the most perilous whirl 
Where the Red Inlet shocks 
Against the rocks. 



152 The Lower Temples. 

" Pearls are the sign of Ishtar,* since in Spring, 

When love revertant all creation hallows, 
At crack of dawn the chiming dewdrops fling 

Their lustrous globes along the expectant shallows ; 
Those drops which sun with first all-quickening ray 

Has struck athwart their mimic worlds of crystal 
Are changed to pearl. Deep in the breathless bay 

As flowers the pollen crave with trembling pistil 
Yearn for those fine sea-bells 
The wide-mouthed shells. 

" Great pearls are lonely and their savage haunt 

Is in the deep where shark and sea-wolf wander. 
How many a diver paid with life for vaunt 

Of seizing this ! How many a merchant, fonder 
Of gold than ease, has lost his all for it ! 

And even as beauty is an agent hallowed 
To awe mind-troubles ; so a poison-fit 

Is broke if pearls are touched upon or swallowed ; 
Pearls will the bane out-thrust 
Of diamond dust ! 



The Lower Temples. 153 

" Was it the pearl ? I know not. But of Esther 

The anger faded as from Elam's range 
Fade into blue the spiteful clouds that pester 

The virginal peaks. Rapturous was the change. 
And she was calm, but in her eyes there brooded 

A look that would not speak, yet crazed my brain, 
A strange desire and bliss that lay yet hooded — 

Bliss with a vast ambition in its train ! 

* Where is the god,' I cried, 

* Would scorn this bride ? ' 

*'* She smiled. And from the black depths of her eyes 

A gleam shot forth. Find him, it seemed to murmur ! 
Shamed from the radiant maiden of the skies 

Great Nimrod turned. A slave had been no firmer. 
Went and took council with his priests and sages, 

Questioned the oracles of cave and tree, 
Pored o'er the mysteries on the breeze-blown pages 

Of leaves that sibyls trace most cunningly ; 

Thence came the answers bold — 

The gods ask gold ! 
7* 



IX 



BITSU THE EUNUCH 



IX 



BITSU THE EUNUCH 



" * Gold ! ' cried the priests. ' For each great god 

an idol 

Golden-robed, jeweled ! Works of the fine-meshed 

loom ! 

Then shall each enter as the groom to bridal 

His marvelous wrought and most luxurious room. 

That being done, the high god of the lightning 

Shall condescend to his terrestrial couch 

And then no more her lone torch vainly brightening 

Shall Esther desolate and unwedded couch ! ' 

Only dark Ahram's mood 

Fierce waxed and rude. 

157 



158 Bitsu the Eunuch. 

" ' What, not enough ! ' he cried ; ' each planet tall 

Is honored so, their every gift requited, 
Gold and fine sculptures decking every wall 

And images that folk may be delighted ! 
For hath not Ishtar idols, and old Time, 

Saturn the wise ? All else are far too mighty 
That hands should shape their effigies sublime, 

Our faith too feeble, minds obscure and flighty. 
An idol only stains 
The holiest fanes. 

" * Be not, O king, deceived ! Regard my warning. 

Bitsu and these, now, as of old, are bent 
On their own profit, not the tower's adorning 

And long that gold on their own flesh be spent. 
I hear their whispers, see their intrigues slow 

To nip the bud of giant-like endeavors : 
What pains doth not this eunuch sly bestow 

On the chaste priestess ! Gladly would he sever 
The pure clean amity 
'Twixt her and me ! ' 



Bitsu the Eunuch. 159 

" More calm he spake : ' O Nimrod, stop your ears, 

Nor stand estranged while plans are green and tender ! 
Wait till the grave" and solid-making years 

Your projects test, your edicts perfect render. 
To noisome minds leave the foul idol brood 

And all their trail of personal defilement : 
Show to the nations who in ebb and flood 

This centre pass no crowning state beguilement. 
Try, through their worship, men's 
Foulness to cleanse ! 

" ' But you, ye sleek priests, best beware ; I know 

Your greed, your hate, your secret slimy plotting ; 
Toward me, toward Nimrod, ye would coil your slow 

Pale circles of deceit. While I, unwotting. 
Would build a glorious throne, a race, a faith. 

Ye would be laying sly eggs of destruction — 
O filthy flies ! — wherefrom the worm that slay'th 

Comes to turn fair to inward foul corruption. 
Rouse not the mountain bear ! 
Bitsu, have care ! ' 



i6o Bitsu the Eunuch. 

" It was the floor of hoary Saturn's fane, 

Which then we held for grave and secret meeting. 
Proud Ahram stand at my right hand had ta'en ; 

Bitsu, upon the stone his forehead beating, 
Knelt on my left. Before my royal chair 

Sat the twelve grove priests with their abject faces ; 
Listened, and weighing all our words with care, 

Stirred not for terror from their several places. 
Bitsu, his beardless head 
Raising, thus said : 

" * Ahram, great lord and right hand of the king ! 

Upon my brow unfairly lights displeasure. 
Your wisdom, past the wit of man, should fling 

Such thoughts aside. By your great soul you 
measure 
Me, a poor worm, that's only half a man. 
To fly like you too feeble is my spirit. 
We lack the grasp to follow out your plan 
Your virtue so transcends our humble merit. 
Slaves, we take thought alone 
For Nimrod's throne. 



Bitsu the Eunuch. i6i 

" 'Have we blasphemed the temples, groves and tower? 

Nay, now! They show the glorious thought of twain: 
Nimrod the god and his own prophet, our 

Great lawgiver and most exhaustive brain. 
But we are baser, to the people nearer ; 

We see their wants, we hear their cries of need, 
We read the heart-beats of the vulgar clearer 

For having lived administ'ring their creed. 
This tower, some festal morn, 
Will stand forlorn 

" ' And Dagon's fane and Ishtar's grove at Ur 

Shall win the masses to their gloomy porches. 
Not all your might, O king of kings, can stir 

The people from their old inveterate orgies ! 
The gods, they'll cry, must not be mocked for whims 

Of Nimrod even, still less of a stranger ! 
These fears, O lord of lords, are not mere dreams ; 

We, humble slaves, but warn you of the danger 
With a rash hand on such 
Old faiths to touch ! 



1 62 Bitsu the Eunuch. 

" ' Ahram is wise ; Ahram is good and pure ; 

All must admire our prophet's quenchless spirit ; 
But who save he so spotless may endure ? 

Who is the fellow-angel can come near it ? 
All other men, to keep them from far worse, 

At times must loose the rein and roll in orgies ; 
The vulgar ease their minds with blow and curse, 

Since every man his evil demon urges 
Out his good angel thrust, 
To plunge in lust. 

" ' Wherefore great Ahram errs in charging greed 

Upon these priests. They read the ancient annals 
First is the throne, and for the throne there's need 

That worship run in the old slippery channels. 
Next is the folk : crimes will be past belief 

If holy revels do not draw the danger : 
The robber, murderer, ravisher and thief 

Will plague the people, fright away the stranger — 
Pleasures no longer balk 
Rebellious talk. 



Bitsu the Eunuch. 163 

" * Thus do we rede. But O, we are most humble, 

We only dare to raise for good our voice. 
In counsels even the greatest mind may stumble ; 

'Tis best to take of many plans a choice. 
Wondrous, O king, is this your lofty tower 

And wide your fame among the nations blown ; 
Tribes no one knew are suppliants to your power; 

Kings over sea ask friendship at your throne. 
And of your wondrous seer 
Farthest lands hear. 

" * But as for me — poor me, too mean to tremble ! 

True, often I with radiant Esther talk ; 
But, that I blame the sage, or e'er dissemble 

In any way, or seek his plans to balk 
I here deny. It were enough for me 

That Esther holds him high. Though neither woman 
Nor man, alas ! yet is not Bitsu free 

To love great persons? has he nothing human? 
And Esther, is not she 
Barren like me ? ' 



164 Bitsu the Eunuch. 

"He ceased and Ahram, white with hidden rage, 

Reached out his clenched hand with indignant gesture: 
He sought by art his fiery heart to assuage, 

And yet, repressed, it shook his shaggy vesture. 
As when among the woods the urchins track 

A porcupine, and swiftly round it sweeping, 
Harm it with stones, and all its hairy back 

Bristles with wrath ; so, at his enemy keeping 
Ever apart and safe, 
In like wise chafe 

" Ahram's strong hands. His sharp-cut Adam's apple 

Throbs in his throat ; his large dark eyes, like stars 
Rayed by long lashes, with his foemen grapple 

Fierce as when Sirius all the desert chars. 
His eagle nose snuffs battle ; so a steed 

Will look when neighing toward the gathering ravens ; 
His chin grows hard ; his bent mouth straight as reed 

And of his brow the steep and pallid heavens 
Toss like the smooth cloud crust 
Before the gust. 



Bitsu the Eunuch. 165 

" * Slaves ? ' he repeated. ' Ay, we're all mere slaves, 

And humble too. For all is not death given ? 
Yet who would sink so low, he no more craves 

To rise an angel through the spheres of heaven ? 
We know the truth. Are we so weak and mean 

As yield to falsehood through unmanly terror ? 
We lust. Why therefore should we wish to screen 

The fact by lies, join falsehood unto error? 
Should we not raise the yoke 
That weighs the folk ? 

" ' Behold this pile, like to the frame of man 

Soaring from dust ! On Space and Time 'tis founded 
As all things human are. The cyclic plan 

With sea-sprung Generation next we rounded. 
The Belly then, that for the frame provides ; 

The Heart, that gives the fabric life and, action ; 
The Chest, which on the others bravely rides ; 

The lower Head, that feels the moon's attraction. 
Then we the Crown designed — 
The glorious mind ! 



1 66 Bitsu the Eunuch. 

" ' Shall we invert this order ? Shall we stake 

In grimy mold the palm-tree, bloom and branches, 
Trying good dates from ropy roots to shake ? 

Shall we deny the truth because our paunches 
May lack for honey cakes and Syrian wine ? 

Which should be leader, pray you, — brain, or belly ? 
Rather the sea shall wave above the pine 

And mountains to their tops lie salt and shelly 
Ere Nimrod, great and wise, 
Govern through lies ! 

" * But judge between us, Nimrod. Now that he 

Invites assault, what say you to the magic 
This flattering eunuch plies to injure me? 

Behold me here. A hundred times a tragic 
Unholy death was shaped for me by him 

Who yonder kneels a paragon of meekness ! 
Had he but won, within my every limb 

Anguish had crept upon the heels of weakness 
And I had gone in gloom 
Down to the tomb. 



Bitsti the Eunuch. 167 

" * For know, great king, this eunuch, love pretending, 

Prayed of me hairs from chin and lip and head, 
* Since they,' quoth he, * their owner's wisdom lending. 

Will turn to gold my own most spurious lead.' 
I gave the hairs, for who am I to say 

Such things are naught ? and yet how little wotted 
The foolish gift was meant my health to slay ! 

The hairs were begged by one who merely plotted 
By treacheries high or low 
Me to o'erthrow. 

" * It was a night framed for vile deeds when I, 

Prompted by bodings of a lurking evil. 
Walked my own housetop and with careful eye 

Beheld in this man's garden, like a devil 
In form to see, a figure that was bowing 

Before a flame. Moved by a silly fear, 
Scaling the wall, I watched this eunuch mowing, 

As maniacs mow, before an image drear 
Molded of wax of bee 
To feature me. 



1 68 Bitsu the Eunuch. 

" ' Anon from out the fire where they lay 

He plucked his brazen pins all white and glowing, 
And, muttering spells, in every shameful way 

Pierced my wax effigy, on that bestowing 
Whatever tortures he on me would vent. 

At length when curse grew weary and the idol 
Was crumbled sore, the rest was slowly spent 

With blistering coals. And still the doll he'd sidle 
Near to the gnawing flame 
And cry my name. 

" ' This is the man, O king magnanimous, 

Who talks of friendship and is quick at fawning ! 
Dream not I fear his magic. 'Tis not thus 

Ahram is humbled. He who braved the yawning 
Stark Himalayan hell can safely laugh 

At old-wife sorceries of a nerveless eunuch ! 
He who has fashioned this enormous staff 

For the king's fame on sun and star-text runic 
Smiles at his juggler sticks 
And petty tricks ! ' 



Bitsu the Etmuch. 169 

" Then started Bitsu as if stung by asp : 

* O King ! ' he cried, * too far this prophet ventures. 
If what he saw were true, he failed to grasp 

The aim of what his gall so fiercely censures. 
But let it pass. Upon this earth there be 

Spirits in flesh that drearti not they are evil, 
Souls three times washed of hell-fire in the sea 

Who dwell in great minds as in corn the weevil. 
Festering, till all within 
Is black with sin. 

" ' At times they show their demonlike possession 

Under dark brows that meet in cloudy stream ; 
Tfieir eyelids red, of sinister expression, 

Half veil at heart a drop of lurid flame. 
Surely against the Evil Eye 'tis rightful 

To guard one's life ! O King, behold it there ! 
'Twas from such spell, unconscious, slow and frightful, 

I shielded me, before the demoniac stare 
Should drain of force my veins 
With searching pains ! ' 



X 



THE PRIDE OF INTELLECT 



X 



THE PRIDE OF INTELLECT 



" Thus 'twixt the eunuch and the fiery sage 

Was wordy battle — scarce they knew my presence. 
Rising, I bade them cease their useless rage, 

And, leant on Bitsu's shoulder, to the pleasance 
Within the temple wall I passed in thought, 

The while the priests withdrew them and the mas- 
ter 
Into the fane retired. Anon he sought 

The topmost shrine. With mien that spake disas- 
ter 

To Esther's high abode 

Wrathful he strode ; 

173 . 



1 74 The Pride of Intellect. 

" Which Bitsu noting, an expressive motion 

Louder than tongue addressed my wavering heart. 
He dared no word, but yet he roused a notion 

So sinister that through my every part 
On swept the tide of jealousy ! Magicians 

Scarce drop a clear drop in a crystal flood 
When all turns black. Within my brain suspicions 

Made sudden revolution. All was rude 
Boisterous, unreasoning hate, 
Senseless as fate. 

" I could not rest. 'Twixt love and hate's attraction 

On Ahram's traces to the sun-god's fane 
I needs must follow. Nowise by inaction 

Could I unbind my bosom of its chain. 
My dais rose in silence by the stair 

Spiral and long that wound about the tower. 
I had them bear me to the higher air 

That sunshine colors to a later hour. 

There where the moon was banned 
I bid them stand 



The Pride of Intellect. 1 75 

" And hide them till I come ; then all alone, 
While the last ray within the sun-fane mutters, 

Upward I softly saunter where the tone 

Of Ahram's voice through the faint music flutters, 

As leaves will drop through cobwebs. 

By the fane 

I stand to catch the purport of their talking, 

Nowise ashamed my royal ears to stain 

With private matters, so that I am balking 

One who too freely moved 

Near her I loved. 

" Esther was speaking : ' Ahram, king and lord, 

Be patient, each one has his woe and trouble. 
Right well I know how in your heart abhorred 

Is all the pomp of priestcraft ; all the double 
Deceitful talk of augurs. But, alas ! 

In carrying out your mighty thoughts and measures 
You crush the folk as elephants the grass 

When to the lake they're marching. 

All our pleasures 
To you but folly seem, 

A worthless dream. 



1 76 The Pride of Intellect. 

" ' Yet think of me. What life is this I lead ? 

For your sake I have tried it, and forever 
Bade home and men farewell. And yet the steed, 

However proud in trappings and however 
Raised to a palace manger, longs to fly 

Back to the desert where his kindred gather ; 
Yes, though his hoofs be gold, if he can spy 

A loop-hole, he will break his chain, and rather 
Parch, than enjoy the wave 
That cools a slave. 

" * And so I long for those old times, when we 

Lolled by the summer tents, or, in the mountains, 
Told at the fires of winter tales of glee : 

How in the elms lurked maidens ; in the fountains 
Hid lovely boys whose laughter, sometimes heard, 

Blent with the wind in tree-tops and the babble 
Of brooks, with flutlngs of the unseen bird ; 

And some afifirmed a faintly-falling gabble 
Was speech of elves ; and some. 
The pheasant's drum. 



The Pride of Intellect. 177 

" ' O, leave this place and take me with you ! Listen 

To one whose heart forewarns her what is best ! 
This place is foul, although with gems it glistens ; 

This town, this nation, never can have rest. 
Ahram, I know not clearly what I mean : 

A horrid something steeps and wraps this tower ! 
All is so fair, and yet, I swear, unclean 

Is every fane, and o'er this temple lower 
Clouds that shall be by sun 
Never undone. 

" ' You fear no demons, but alas for me ! 

What power have I to save me from possession 
By sevenfold imps that dwell below the sea, 

By earless devils deaf to all concession. 
Sexless, who live far down in earth, at times 
Rising with sulphurous thunders ? 

Though your magic 
Should keep such off, not all the sun-god's chimes 
Mayhap shall save your vestal from a tragic 
Mentionless lot by night 
Or death through fright 



1 78 The Pride of Intellect. 

" ' At hands of jinns who haunt the mountain peaks. 

But yet again I say, the eyes of evil 
Have smit this pile with taint. The temple reeks 

With unseen blotches, cankers, that deceive all 
You men of wisdom. Lips of baleful force 

Over the whole have jabbered imprecations ; 
All is unwholesome, from the topmost course 

Story by story to the grim foundations 
Where fires of myrrh and nard 
Earth's bosom charred. 

" ' Nay, smile not ! You are greater, wiser far 

Than woman e'er can be. Yet women often 
Have vague forewarnings of a truth. A star 

Is sometimes traced,though mists the outlines soften 
To blurry haze, and eyes which see it best 

May fail to mark the little lamps that beacon 
Around great moving planets. In my breast 

All is so dark my words must fail to quicken, 
Alas, your skeptic ear ; 
Yet hear me, hear ! ' 



The Pride of Intellect. 1 79 

" A silence fell. Viewed from that giddy height 

The town embowered in trees, the country gleaming 
With silvery crisscross of canals, the light 

From myriad dwellings, and the sky-shine dreaming 
On the broad river — all was visionary, 

Sublime, unreal — a checker-board methought. 
And I the giant, who, from cloudlands airy. 

Conning the little squares, most lightly ought 
With outstretched hand to gain 
The mimic plain. 

" Then Ahram spake : ' O dearly-loved, sweet Esther ! 

There was a time when need of speech like yours 
Had never been. The good old times were blester, 

Yet not so great as these. Ambition's lures 
Once I would readily have scorned. But now 

That, forced on me, a mighty task is given, 
How can I linger, how refuse and how 

Dream o'er again, as then I did, that heaven 
Of wedded life with you 
The lovely, true ? 



i8o The Pride of Intellect. 

" * Nimrod had mercy on my captive lot 

And raised me to be chief of all his servants, 
Then every remnant of our nation got 

A benefit thereafter. No observance 
Of cringing habits gained me rank, but pure 

Fidelity to what is best of spirit 
In Nimrod and mankind. While stars endure 

This world the same great maxims shall inherit : 
Self-sacrifice and love 
For all that move. 

" ' I am not harsh. Within this breast is beating 

As warm a love for you as ever burned ; 
But if I yield to you, I shall be cheating 

Millions of wretches, e'en like them that yearned 
In vain for mercy to the skies, and raised 

Their torn eyesockets to the ruthless great, 
Or lingered, with injustice sickened, dazed 

By crimes of kings, or bowed beneath the weight 
Of priests, whose devilish faith 
Grinds, crushes, slay'th. 



The Pride of Intellect. 1 8 1 

" * What may not self-denial reach? Indulgence! 

Alas, to what undoing does it come ? 
Where lives a woman in divine effulgence 

Of sanctity like yours ? Must you have home — 
You — called to stand a monument of beauty, 

Inward and outward, something raised o'er sin, 
To whom her purity is more than duty — 

A spiritual mother of those truths that win 
Surely, as through the tides 
Tigris outglides ? 

" * Behold yon ash-gray, just now rosy portals 

Of the great sun ! When from my cheeks the red 
Fades and I go to join the wise immortals 

That live indeed, though live men call them dead, 
I will not leave a blemish on my soul ; 

I will not creep among the shades in terror ; 
I will not, sick of conscience, miss the goal ; 

I will not plead that crime is earthly error, 
Whereto — not I alone — 
All men are prone. 



1 82 The Pride of Intellect. 

" * But as the wheel of fifty golden spears, 

Whirled by the sun-god, every morning pierces 
The sluggish serpent of the fog and tears 

Its shadowy hide before the light immerses 
The landscape in a glory ; so may I, 

Breaking the rings of crawling ignorance, 
Let fall the radiant light of truth from high, 

Cast error back into the baser haunts 
Where men are beasts, and fall 
Deepest of all. 

" ' And you ? You will not be my comrade here, 

My follower there, my spiritual full completion ? 
Your golden chains are heavy, but I fear 

Far heavier are those chains which the magician 
Bitsu the eunuch seeks to load you with. 

Frighting with tales of goblins, his endeavor 
Has been, will be, like worms that bore the pith 

Of goodly shrubs, by little gnawings clever 
To undermine my work. 
Yea, he doth lurk 



The Pride of Intellect, 183 

" * In seeming harmless guise about my feet. 

When there shall seem to him a crisis brewins" 
He'll slime my path. His crooked, small deceit 

Will catch with Nimrod to my sure undoing. 
And even you, who should be firm as steel 

To all I plan, into your soul may enter 
The thin edge of a doubt. Even you will feel 

Hurt to your dear heart's golden-ruddy centre 
Because of my neglect 
Of you, elect. 

" ' Yet, though I know my fate, no further shunning 

Exists for me. Like him who hunts wild goats 
And finds himself with swift momentum running 

Across a knife-like ridge ; beneath him floats. 
Far down below, a cloud ; aghast, he fears 

To halt one instant, lest his nerve should alter; 
Ever with restless ardor on he steers 

In deadly terror lest his purpose falter ; — 
Thus do I haste forlorn 
From morn to moirn. 



184 The Pride of Intellect. 

" * Watch me in pity. Add not your complaint 
To all the burden of my coming battle. 

Let me be hermit, stay yourself a saint, 

And turn an adder's ear to all the tattle 

Of eunuchs, slaves and slavish priests. 

Ay, so 

To speech of kings, should ever Nimrod, losing 
His present awe, upon your state bestow- 
That flattery which resides in kingly choosing, — 

Let him not cause light blame 

To smirch your name. ' 

" * You are not just ! ' arose her passionate voice 

As nightingales awake the shadowy thicket. 
* You fear not demons, yet will show no choice 

For one god more than other. Good or wicked 
Are all alike to your sublime disdain. 

If they exist not, why this sumptuous tower 
Fashioned throughout by human sweat and pain? 

What are these mummeries ? what the bridal-dower 
Bestowed within these gates 
On one who waits ? ' 



The Pride of Intellect. 185 

" ' Listen ! ' he cried. ' This structure is for those 

That see not what on each green leaf is written. 
They must have gods and foes of gods ; the blows 

Of their own hands they fancy jinns have smitten. 
They ask for temples ; eight of them are few. 

They long for idols, and when we deny them 
Will worship pebbles, rags of sundry hue, 

Or call on gods of pottery which they buy then 
With half a harvest crop 
From a mean shop. 

" * But to the wise this talisman hath meaning 

Most orderly, complete, sublime, eterne. 
Each story imitates the gradual weaning 

Of mind from matter. Herewithin discern 
From tier to tier man's grosser thought of heaven, 

As ore in flames, by gradual steps refined, 
And in this fane superior to the seven 

Know that I honor Him whose boundless mind 
Exists in every groove 
Where atoms move. 



1 86 The Pride of Intellect. 

" *■ Now mark, tall spirit ! These Chaldeans teach 

The earth is like a shield all hollow under ; 
The sun, when he has run his daily reach. 

Hissing divides the ocean waves asunder 
And sinks to Hades, Thence by magic might' 

He hoists him through the eastern sea to lighten 
The shades of one day more. Yet truly sight 

Hath never seen one ocean quicklier brighten 
Or one shore sparkle more 
Than other shore. 

" '• We deem us wise. What if a tiny beetle, 

An insect vile that haunts the lowest ground, 
Should read the earth-shape better, should unseat all 

The fancies sage Chaldeans dare propound? 
Out of the bog the beetle molds a sphere 

To house its eggs ; with kind and clumsy ardor 
Under the sun across the sandy mere 

Rolls his small ball of germs the tricksy hoarder : 
Thus is our earth revolved — 
The problem solved. 



The Pride of Intellect. 187 

" ' This earth's a sphere that hangs in midmost heaven 

And round it moves, or seems to move, the sun, 
And where his rays bear down with heat most even 

Life most proUfic on his path is spun. 
Life loves the sun. By him is Hfe engendered, 

Wherefore all life looks westward at day's end 
And yearns that way, because the sun has rendered 

One daylight more for timorous man to spend. 
Westward all beings move 
Inspired by love 

" ' Of light and life, fearful that each day's end 

May prove the last. And so, did nothing stay them. 
Westward the nations round the globe would wend, 

Slowly but surely circling. What delay them ? 
Their own great vices ! the unstinted store 

Of wealth the sun piles on their way; the folly 
Which makes them boast their riches, ay, and more — 

The hatred of their neighbors who are wholly 
Wanting in wealth and ease ! 
Such men as freeze 



1 88 The Pride of Intellect. 

" ' Far in the north by dismal hut and tent, 

Alone, and battling with all natural rigors ; 
Such grow so strong that when the bands are rent 

Which bind them in their tribes, the wretched diggers 
Of winter roots, the fur-clad brutes, the men, 

Who, starving, freezing, hate the southern nations, 
Burst like the mined levee between the fen 

And river ! Then come wars and desolations 
Like to which those were mild 
When Nimrod spoiled. 

" * They too desire the sun. They too will languish 
For full-yeared summers and to southward march 
With sateless maws, regardless of the anguish 

That runs before them, of the wastes to parch 
Their headlong hordes, and of the ancient towns 

Their stupid force o'erthrows, still less the learning 
Of patient men their ignorant violence drowns. 

Thus do they southward wander, slaughtering, burn- 
ing— 
At last with rue their track 
To wander back. 



The Pride of Intellect. 1 89 

" ' Thus, O fair Esther, by two instincts spurred 

The mass of races south and westward jostle. 
Slowly and gropingly ; full oft they erred 

From one straight path. As when two golf-men hustle 
The golfing ball at once to south and west 

And neither gains, but in the hurly-burly 
Betwixt the two southwestward it is pressed, 

So have the nations, gradually but surely, 
Poured, nor as yet have ceased 
From the northeast. 

" * Your eyes are wide ! Yea, what has this to do 

With you and yours ? Be patient. Every nation 
That slays another in its turn must rue 

The deed performed. There lies a just equation 
In ever)'- act : the conquerer in turn 

Is weakened, scattered, hurled in fragments broken 
Back by the conquered ; to each race hath stern 

Revengeful Mars alternate courage spoken. 
Through battles lost and won 
Man blunders on. 



190 The Pride of Intellect. 

" ' Have we not sat beside the foamy shore 

Of our vast lake among the steadfast mountains 
And watched the billows rise, stop, break and pour 

Slanting along the beach their turbid fountains ? 
Thus do the nations, slanting on that zone 

The sun puts round the earth, descend by torrents — 
Only in ruins to dissolve when grown 

Too proud, too rich, the scorn, the just abhorrence 
Of One who loathes the flood 
Of human blood ! 

" * Now mark. Great Nimrod's line, descended far 
From out the northeast ranges, smote the nations 
Southward and westward till their cruel war 

Reached the blue Nile. Here were their central 
stations 
And hither back they rallied, hurled by those 

Black warriors once their servants. Nimrod's power 
Has shaped an empire here ; but still as rose 
The sun of yesterday and braved his hour, 
Nimrod shall have his day, 
Then pass away. 



The Pride of Intellect. 191 

" 'And we ? This southern folk has laid its hand 

Upon our necks ; let us but wait, disasters 
Are sure to reach our conquerors, and the land 

That knew us slaves shall cringe to us as masters. 
But where's the good ? Shall we remain the sport 

Of Mars, who drives now this way, now the other ? 
Brains are the only weapons, and that fort 

No foot can storm, no wave nor flame can smother, 
Is built in hearts that brood 
Only on good. 

** ' Know then that I was chosen, 'gainst my will. 

To help mankind through Nimrod's mighty power, 
Raise them from groveling instincts and to fill 

Their stubborn hearts with kindness. 'Tis the dower 
Fate has allotted me. Within my hand 

I bear my life ; but, while the chance is given, 
Ahram shall build his projects, though the sand 

Be shifty underneath. They are the leaven 
That saves great Nimrod's name 
From lasting shame. 



ig2 The Pride of Intellect. 

" 'So shall this nation by my projects led 

Know greatness, peace and glorious progress ; even 
As when the trade-winds blow and sails are spread 

And merchantmen, by changeless breezes driven, 
Fare boldly o'er the laughing sea ; their nests 

When halcyons build in safety on the waters, 
When infinite peaceful freshness cools and rests 

After long speechless drought Arabia's daughters : 
So shall each human hive 
Through me revive ! ' 



XI 



A WOMAN'S POWER 



XI 



A WOMAN'S POWER 



" ' Alas ! ' cried Esther, * what have these to do 

With you and me ? Think you, a single mower 
Can reap Euphrates valley ? no, not you, 

Nor any man by work however sour 
Can compass it. To your own kin, to me 

First duties owing are. You do so muffle 
Your mind in clouds heroic, that you see 

Shapes that exist not, arguments that shuffle 

With cruel facts, as when 

Magic blinds men ! ' 

195 



196 A Woinaris Power. 

" * Nay, hear me out ! ' cried Ahram. ' Once for all 

Being here, perforce we must our lots encounter. 
To do men good, no thought, no act must fall 

Unused for careful ends. We may not saunter 
At ease through life with children at the knee, 

A tender spouse against our shoulders leaning. 
Ourselves a perfect sacrifice must be : 

All thoughts like that from out our bosoms weaning 
We must march on alone 
With hearts like stone. 

" * Yet with a sacrifice we gain a payment 

Far higher than aught else that men have known, 
Far richer than brown gold or silken raiment, 

Ay, loftier, sweeter than the happy throne 
Of those who live to love as other men. 

For loving man or woman is a peril ; 
But, love mankind ! ah, then you're happy, then 

You sow the grain that never can be sterile. 
Though on ungrateful ground 
The seed be found. 



A Woman s Power, 197 

" * The loftiest love of human twain — what is it 

But earthy dross entire or else in part ? 
Love of mankind exhales a scent exquisite 

As winds that blow from out the snowy heart . 
Of clear pure mountains. Not one selfish taint 

Of marsh-bred flowers, and not an amorous breathing 
Of lovesick trees, nor one narcotic plaint 

Such as from out the lily's calix seething, 
Tells that the lily's soul. 
So white, is foul ! 

" * How are we nobler than the beasts and birds, 

The wanton fishes and the selfish flowers ? 
He who his loins against that passion girds 

Can rightly claim his manhood. He who lowers 
Himself to beasts shall die like them. But those 

Who fight themselves and keep that demon under, 
For them at last no heat of sun, no snows. 

No lightning-bolt, no watery waste shall sunder 
From the great prize, the throne 
On Wisdom's stone. 



198 A Woman's Power. 

" ' Yet listen, Esther, it may be that later, 

Our tasks once done and Nimrod's favor lost, 
Inferior duties may usurp the greater 

And we, released from those high fates which crossed 
Our peaceful ways, may see once more the hills. 

Our childhood's cradle, may inhale the ether 
Life-lengthener, joy and antidote to ills 

Which blows about our home. When that comes 
neither 
Wisdom shall lure nor pride 
Me from your side ! ' 

" With that, O mortals, from his seat uprose 

Wise Ahram, comforted in heart, and ready 
To face the world again. As honey flows 

From fragrant lips of flow'rs to lure the steady, 
Straight-winged bees from off the appointed path 

Esther, her utterance thick with honeyed languor, 
Murmured his name : * Ahram ! Ay me ! and hath 

Your heart no room for aught but schemes and anger ? 
Have you no vein that's warm ? 
See this bare arm 



A Womaris Power, 199 

" * How shapely, white, coursed with blue veins a-tingle 

With love for you ! Now fancy it all dry 
Of light and life : Such is the man who, single, 

Thinks to fulfill a brain-sick destiny ! 
Give o'er such thoughts heroic ! Feel my heart 

Bounding against my side as though to sever 
The space, the cruel gap, the gulfs that part 

One sphere of love in twain. If you were ever 
True, sever not your face 
From my embrace ! 

" * But love me rightly, in a human fashion, 

Nor seek to ape the gods whom pride doth stay. 
And they not always, from a natural passion. 

Love is a birthright. He who love would slay 
Is punished sore with thousand starting troubles! 

Nor think to set yourself o'er rules that bind, 
Surely as sightless death befalleth bubbles. 

The man who scorns the rights of womankind. 
Ahram, respect in me 
Love's majesty ! ' 



200 A Woman^s Power. 

" Then through a fissure of the wall I saw 

What drove me frantic with crushed love and jealous : 
Around a sunburnt neck white lilies draw 

A throbbing circle ; in a living trellis 
Of arms and silken hair is Ahram bound, 

Restless, yet yielding to the fascination ; 
His bow-shaped, parted lips give forth no sound, 

But in his starlike eyes a supplication 
Kneels to her wayward face 
And begs for grace. 

" But she with one hand closes up those orbs 

And on his lips pours her whole soul in passion : 
The blissful pressure every vein absorbs 

In yearning pain. From him could sculptors fashion 
The man who sees in forest drear and lone 

The fragrant witch-snake, who, around him ringing 
Her aromatic coils, so dear has grown 

He smiles, aware that death's against him clinging. 
Thus did forgetful sleep 
Wise Ahram steep 



A Woman s Power, 201 

" One moment and no more. Then back he started, 

Awake to fate and all the crime he dreamed. 
With trembling hand the embrace delicious parted 

And now to fly resolved and now he seemed 
Resolved to stay and ply a cruel tongue. 

But all in vain. Behind his sinewy members 
Soft ambush lay, and round his shoulders hung 

A lithe and swaying form. Those ash-grown embers 
Of his old fiery love — 
He felt them move. 

" * Nay, I must go ! ' he cried. * Ah, no, no — cruel !* 

'You know not what you ask !' — *I claim your love !' — 
* Take these and these ! ' — ^Those kisses were but fuel 

To her long starving flame. * By sky above, 
By earth below and those great souls that hover 

Betwixt them both, I will not let you go 
Till you affirm that still you are my lover. 

Till on your lips and in your eyes you show 
I am your only pride. 
Your love, your bride ! ' 



202 A Womans Power. 

" ' You are ! ' he cried, alternate pale and red. 

* I loved you more than self and thought to smother 
The thing for good of men. It seemed so dead 

I hoped to touch you gently as a brother 
A sister greets. Far otherwise it is. 

Alas for me ! I am poor clay, I tremble. 
Where is the antidote against such bliss ? 

You are unearthly ! How can I dissemble 
With words when blushes speak 
Upon my cheek?' 

" Thereat he made to clasp her tighter yet ; 

But she, afraid, or as a prudent winner, 
Got her away and soon a space had set 

Betwixt them both. Like a detected sinner 
Wise Ahram stands ; but next, as one who feels 

A load withdrawn, nor yet a moment speaking, 
Guiltily, wanly looking back, he steals 

Off to the door. But still her eyes keep seeking 
Lures for his quick return : 
Like brands they burn. 



A Woman s Power, 203 

" One instant there he stood. ' You've humbled me 

Who weened me proof against my lower nature. 
I blame not you. I go myself to free 

From stings of love, from thought of every feature 
Of your too ardent form. Alas, you rouse 

The dragon passion that obscures the shining 
Of sunlike virtue. What no law allows 

May hap ere morn. But when your dreams come 
twining 

About your head, beware 
I am not there ! ' 

" He fled, and Esther with her torchlike eyes 

Seemed still his vanished features to peruse. 
* Ah ! ' murmured she, * what blissful terror flies 

Through every limb ! Those words I cannot choose 
But thus translate : Great Ahram has surrendered 1 

This very night, who knows ? we shall be one. 
This very night, O victory ! shall have rendered 

Twin hearts too glad that they should greet a sun 
That frights too soon, too soon 
The lovelorn moon.' 



XII 



THE DEED OF NIMROD 



XII 



THE DEED OF NIMROD 



" Ay me ! and where was I ? Upon them gazing 

My blood was fire, my brain a whirling flame. 
Her visage was a spell ; her form was crazing 

My every instinct without care for shame. 
I could have sprung on my departing servant 

And torn him limb from limb. 

I could have laid 
On her a ruthless hand. Then vainly fervent 

Wild, maiden prayers my furious love had stayed ! 

Yet which way could I turn 

To cool my burn ? 

207 



2o8 The Deed of Nimrod. 

" Burst forth ? reveal myself a vile eavesdropper ? 

Cast Nimrod up to Ahram's silent scorn ? 
Arouse in Esther an aversion proper 

Toward one of dignity so all-forlorn ? 
With halting step a-tiptoe down I stole 

Revolving close a thousand vagrant fancies, 
How to possess her fond and inmost soul, 

How to make head against the o'erwhelming chances. 
Setting 'gainst Ahram's claim 
My royal name. 

" Thus found I Bitsu. ' Counsel me,' I said, 

* And you shall never live to rue the action, 
Counsel me Esther to my royal bed. 

But not unwilling. Let my own attraction 
Or that of power as queen and only spouse 

Urge her to violate the sacred sealing 
Whereby she's sealed and all her god-borne vows ! 

Give me relief, for this my brain is reeling 
With her great loveliness, 
Her sweet distress ! ' 



The Deed of Nimrod. 209 

" Thereat the swarthy eunuch turned so pale 

That I did laugh. ' What now, thou beast unhuman ! 

Hast thou a heart, and can thy soul avail 
To love with manliness a glorious woman ? ' — 

* Nimrod ! ' he cried, ' Great god of heaven and earth, 

Jeer not your slave. I do love Esther truly : 
No one so well can prize her matchless worth 
For no ignoble thought doth wound unduly 

Her perfect purity, 

Her chastity. 

*' ' Give me but time to think ! ' — ' Time is for slaves. — 
'She will not hear your suit.' — 'She must. Consider!' — 

* I know not what to rede.' — ' Why then, my braves 

Shall have their sport with you ! ' — 

' O godlike bidder, 
Have mercy on a man who loves, next you, 

The one you love, with deep respect and honor.' — 

* I have, for you live yet ! 'Twere well I slew 

Ten thousand such, for that they looked upon her ! 
Think on it, Bitsu ; see, 
It cannot be 



2IO The Deed of Nimrod, 

" ' But that, once queen, fair Esther will discover 

How vast a height she stands above the swarm 
Of this world's women. Then her godlike lover 

And faithful eunuch will receive her warm 
Heart-given thanks ; those windy words the sage 

Has stuffed her with will seem the silliest fables 
And you shall form, in your decrepit age, 

Our chosen counsellor, seated at our tables, 
Third in our mighty realm, 
Close to the helm ! ' 

"That struck. Sly Bitsu, in a flash perceiving 

The fall of Ahram and his own tall gain, 
Esther's reward when she had done with grieving 

For Ahram's loss, and more, the perilous strain 
On my unruly passions, in the caves 

Of his unholy fancy spawned a hideous 
And tempting plot that oiled the boiling waves 

Of passion with smooth hope. What turns insidious 
Of argument I wove 
To prop my love ! 



The Deed of Nimrod. 211 

" Then straight I hied me to my palace, clamorous 

For wine and roses, dancers and the slaves 
Who stir the languid pulse with hymnals amorous 

Of wave-borne Ishtar and the song that raves 
Of love new loves begetting. And soothsayers 

Pondered what hidden fortune should be mine 
Ere break of day, if, after gifts and prayers 

In Friday's house, I should another shrine 
Brave with unhallowed love 
And seize its dove. 

"* Great,' cried the wizards, ' is your star to-night 

With Venus standing in conjunction patent. 
Whate'er you plan will surely turn to right. 

In you, if love you ask, success is latent 
Such as you never dreamt since life began ! ' 

Whereat made bold, with Bitsu and no other, 
When night had long surpassed her midmost span, 

I sought the temple of Ishtar the god's mother. 
There, vowing gifts, I sighed 
And suppliant cried : 



212 The Deed of Nimrod. 

" * Ishtar ! Anunit ! Thou who like to fire 

O'er the fallows dawnest on benighted men ; 
Ishtar ! Anunit ! Gladdener of the sire, 

He that long has childless and unfruitful lain ; 
Ishtar ! Anunit ! Stealthy as hyaenas. 

Bold as stalks the lion marching on his prey ; 
Ishtar ! Anunit ! From creation seen as 

Goddess of the four skies, whom the gods obey : 
Ponder in thy majesty 
All I wrought for thee ! 

" ' Ishtar ! Anunit ! We the temple widest 

Save alone thy father's here endowed to thee ; 
Ishtar ! Anunit ! here perchance residest . 

Thou whose servant day is, heaven thy canopy. 
Ishtar ! Anunit ! Still the mountains hurtle 

'Neath the hand that oft the vault of sky unlocks ; 
Ishtar ! Anunit ! Thou whose rains are fertile, 

Dawner, great begetter of life in arid rocks, 
Ponder in thy majesty 
All I wrought for thee ! ' 



' The Deed of Nimrod. 213 

" One watch before the dawn ! And Babylon 
Lay sunken fathom-deep within the shimmer 

Of a vast fairy sea which slowly won 

Its life from out the rivers by the glimmer 

Of a strange moon. 

Around the tower there stole 

An inlet from the feathery inundation ; 

Here was an isle pyramidal ; a shoal 

Was there of temples, as if no salvation 

From that weird flood were found 

Elsewhere o'er ground. 

"Alone we seemed, alone upon an isle. 

Sweet slumbering Esther and one man, left over 
From all earth's myriads ! What was then worth while, 

Save the last loved one and her fated lover ? 
Bride of the sky ? Surely, was I not god 

As great as any known, from sun-god onward ? 
If greater lived, why let him with a nod 

My plans frustrate, yes, let him hurl me downward 
Headlong from temples built 
For good, or guilt ! 



214 The Deed of Nimrod. 

" If Babylon lay fettered in a spell 

Of midnight magic, so, too, Nimrod wandered 
Dazed by the fogs of devilish lust that well 

From depths of souls unhappy which have pandered 
To a weak will. Nerved for a desperate deed 

I marched wide-eyed to take a sleeping city. 
The more I dwelt upon the crime my speed 

Grew more. I hastened to forestall my pity. 
Ghost-like my shame I bore 
From floor to floor. 

" Far to the south the royal stars, the Crown 

Bade me be king. Above my head Orion 
Those stars of mine in aidance showered down 

Nerve and address. From palace court a lion 
Caged for my sport lifted his awful voice. 

And with a whisper through the tower ever 
Lapsed the sweet waters where with silvery noise 

They purged each story ere they found the river, 
Whenceforward sevenfold 
Holier it rolled. 



The Deed of Nimrod. 215 

"Yet did I often linger by the way : 

Meseems that voices from the scampering geckos 
Reach my scared ear ; meseems that sounds betray 

My purpose, that my footsteps wake the echoes 
The loudHer now I strive to make them Hghter, 

And that the beating of my timorous heart — 
Poor battering heart of Nimrod the fierce fighter ! — 

Roars like a drum, whereat from sleep might start 
A slumbering girl — to lame 
Nimrod with shame ! 

" The hanging parted — there upon a couch 

In richness worth a kingdom lay the maiden 
Bathed in dim light. The night-lamps near her crouch 

In jars of jadestone with incisings laden. 
Breathless she looks, and yet most quick. Her lips 

Half parted as to speak. Her eyelids tender 
Scarce shut ; her bosom bared ; her lovely hips 

Marred by fine gossamer-linen folds that render 
. Whiter the silvery skin 
That shines within. 



2 1 6 The Deed of Nimrod. 

" I stood upon the holiest spot of all 

Within my kingdoms, in the shrine devoted 
To him who most unbearably lets fall 

His wrath upon mankind. Surely I doted 
When thus to that forbidden couch I stole 

Whereon she lay, the girl whom gods were witness 
As set aside for vestal. My fierce soul 

Curdled with terror. ' It would be in fitness 
With my just meed,' I said, 
' If I fell dead ! ' 

" Was she awake? . . . There seemed a smile to play 

About the clear curved eyebrows and the bended 
And pouting lips. Her lashes seemed to stray 

Ranged on the fair cheek with a grace intended. 
Pink were her ears, and through the alabaster 

Of neighboring parts the red was spreading still. 
She lay there waiting for a heavenly master 

To say the word, when, buoyant to his will. 
Up she would float and leave 
Mortals to grieve. 



The Deed of Nimrod. 217 

" Was she aware ? . . . The firm young virgin bosoms 

Dinted by slender forearm, which did seem 
Most like two snowballs topped with sweet-briar blos- 
soms, 
Nor heaved in long-drawn waves, as when the dream 
Is deep, unvexed ; nor was it swayed, the pool 

In whose clear white shone the sweet pearl, her navel, 
With gentle pulses answering to the rule 

Of her soft breathing ! . . . Ah, who may unravel 
The thoughts, or keen, or blind 
Of womankind ? 

" She is awake ! . . . Her shapely wondrous thighs 

Lie far too firm, and the slim legs, round-ankled, 
Stretch their fine curves straightforward thoughtfulwise. 

She breathes like one in whom there never rankled 
Suspicion of an equal, who knows well 

Her power, and though man gaze upon her glories 
Moves not, her pride being wide as gates of hell, — 

One who is glad because her beauty worries 
Men that insanely grope 
Toward a false hope. 



2 1 8 The Deed of Nimrod. 

" Nay, she doth sleep ! . . . She sleeps as angels might 

Secure in Paradise, and all the quiet 
That armors virtuous minds. The spot so white, 

Lucent and smooth, nor on the arm, yet nigh it, 
Nor quite upon the breast, has such a lustre 

It seems of opal. In that dusk profound 
Her jet-black hair in many a blooming cluster 

Takes purplish hues ; upon which royal ground 
White as a swan afloat 
Swims her round throat. 

" Three steps, no more ! and I was by her side 

Tingling with warmth of her delicious body ; 
Heard of her fragrant breath the balmy tide 

Run to and fro, in time with pulses ruddy 
Of veins celestial ; quaked with mortal dread 

Lest the least noise my victim should be waking ; 
Glanced o'er my shoulder, down and overhead 

Lest wrathful sprite his vengeance might be taking, 
And gasped as if a wraith 
Choked my poor breath. 



The Deed of Nimrod. 219 

" So craven stood I, nowise sure that she 

Who lay there, tempting, warm and almost smiling. 
Might not be conscious of my agony 

Of love and fear. But if she were, no whiling 
Was needful now. But if not, what would hap 

When I with ruthless violence should trouble 
Those spheres untouched before, my strong arms wrap 

That lily candid in enchainments double 
Of sin and luxury 
She might not flee ? 

" There was a time, when warring in the hills 

With fierce Carduchians I was ambushed, hunted 
And hurled toward an abyss. Still memory thrills 

To think of how, when sword and spear were blunted 
With deathful blows, no choice at last remained 

Save from the cliff to throw myself ; preferring 
To court death so than surely to be slain, 

Honor too mighty on my foes conferring. 
There did I doubting wait 
In wan debate ; 



220 The Deed of Nimrod. 

" Yet was the later anguish greater far. 

Anon my hand toward the jade lampstand hurried, 
Then paused because my senses were at war. 

In her great loveliness my eyes lay buried, 

And cried the light should stay ! 

My lips were wroth, 

That they so long from her ripe lips were parted. 

My knees, that ne'er before had known of sloth, 

Shook, yet with longing toward their mistress started. 

O'er all, my coward soul 

Strained for control ! 

" One hand approached the lamp, while knees were bent 

In adoration of her grace ; its fellow 
Yearning to snap the last impediment 
Moved toward her bosom. 

Hark ! what murmurs mellow 
Float on her lips ? * At last to claim his right 

Comes my true lord ! ' But eyes are fast shut, neither 
Does feature change nor any awakening light 
Break the calm glory of the slumbrous breather. 
Sudden ... the light was crossed! . . . 
Esther was lost. " 



XIII 



HAND-OF-SULTAN 



XIII 



HAND-OF-SULTAN 



Tense was the silence o'er that crumbly mound 

When Nimrod from his long recital stinted. 
AH and Gourred on the tile-strewn ground 

Sat close embraced. Then first they marked how 
glinted 
A wondrous pallor on the horizon east 

And knew the dayspring nigh ; that while the demon 
Waxed to a bulgy height, and, sighing, ceased 

With tale half told. But Gourred sweet, a woman 

Most curious, durst implore 

Nimrod for more. 

223 



224 Hand-of -Sultan. 

" Barbarians, " quoth the great ghost at the last, 

" I need no urging my strange tale to finish, 
But ask that you, whenso the sun is passed 

The midnight's nadir, my old pain diminish 
By listening to the rest I yearn to tell. 

Now while I turn me to my desert prison 
See ye revolve my words and actions well ! 

Lo ! as I speak the cruel sun has risen 
And with disdainful light 
Hurls me from sight." 

O'er Phraat the holy, past the Shushan hills. 

The red had grown, and now the fog-belt whitened. 
His shadowy bulk was honeycombed as rills 

Will mine a snowbank. Ever more it lightened 
Till where great Nimrod stood to ease his mind 

A roll of mist curled upward, slowly floated 
Off toward the waste. Ever with arms entwined, 

Sunk in a stupor, on the mist-wreath gloated 
Gourred and Sayid. Then 
Noise rose of men. 



Hand-of -Sultan. 225 

The light still grows, and on the sherdy plain 

Where to old dawns a brilliant city started 
Points glitter. What — has Babel come again ? 

Thus, while their lips in anxious stare are parted 
Bursts the new sun all flaming on the mound, 

Bathes them, drops lower, then on lances hovers 
Near and below. There comes a shouting sound — 

At last the foe has found the pilgrim lovers ! 

Jeering the horsemen sweep 

Toward the old keep. 
10* 



226 Hand-of -Sultan. 

How long shall cowards flourish, and how long 

The tender brow of day grow tough and brazen 
With gazing on the never-ending wrong 

Man heaps on man ? In what age shall the blazon 
Of Lord Protector to the meek be one 

That all outcrows the haughtiest war-stained title, 
Or bannerets earned by service baselier done, 

Or pompous shields, of lucre the requital? 
When shall men feel in meekness 
The strength of weakness ? 

A million times the sun with equal care 

And patient visage cheered the deep-grooved valley. 
The millionth time, O sight to cause despair! 

The scene must needs with all the foregone tally. 
For in the arms of a dark-featured rider 

Was Gourred borne ; nor could she shrink away ; 
While All, bruised and pinioned, marched beside her 

Half stripped, and bleeding from the uncalled-for fray. 
Coarse phrase and villainous jeers 
Burned in their ears. 



Hand-of-Stdtan. 227 

Before the horseman, as a leader, yet 

In deadly fear of men so loud and reckless 
Upon an ass a tremulous man was set, 

Who now that lady eyed and now the necklace 
Of antique beads which with his sordid hand 

He'd caught from Gourred's lovely curving shoulders. 
What was his thought ? What had his cunning planned ? 

None knew among those ignorant beholders 
Who had been safely fain 
A gift to gain. 

And on they trail across the seed-pearl rain 

Of melody the larks pour from the zenith 
Washing their bosoms of the earthy stain 

Won while the night upon her star- throne queeneth. 
The datepalm, proud of beauty and of use, 

Waves a kind welcome to the passers sorry. 
As being too gentle to perceive the clues 

Of their strange motions. Only aromas myrrhy 
Rise from the hurrying hoofs 
^ - As mild reproofs. 



2 28 Hand-of-Sultan» 

The buffalo that on the stagnant pool 

Sways his broad muzzle like an alligator 
To stare surprise ; the savage boars that rule 

In jungles dense on Tigris, as the .satyr 
Ruled of old time ; the treacherous maneless lion 

Hunted of Nimrod, and the abhorrent wolf, 
The fox's bastard, and the watchdog's scion, 

Who changes form poor woodmen to engulf — 
None, such was Gourred's charm. 
Had done them harm. 

Nor these wild Arabs that with brandished spears 

Had scaled the height by two pale saints defended 
Had acted so, nor blows and brutal jeers 

Upon these lambs of innocence expended. 
Stood not behind them a most shameless force, 

One that makes vulgar, smirches still the cleanly 
And dries each generous impulse at the source. . . 

Dull souls, unable to decipher keenly 

This truth : There's none so bold 
Keeps ill-earned gold. 



Hand-of -Sultan. 229 

Thus to the town of Hillah are they come. 

But, at their advent, the bazaar's loose rabble 
Hoot and swarm fast. So bees with venomous hum 
Swarm round a thievish Death's-head moth and 
scjuabble 
Who shall sting first. But Hand-of-Sultan, he 

Who rode the ass, had cast about sweet Gourred 
That veil she scorned, lest the low folk should see 
And feel the heavenly splendor of her forehead 
And turn from foes to friends 
Against his ends. 

The Kadi of the town was his ally ; 

It boots not wherefore, if it were not honest. 

Dragging the saints to his divan, the cry 

Unmanly rose : 

" O Kadi, thou that shonest 

So many years a not inferior sun 

To Judge Hakeem, thy musklike reputation 

Smells sweet with the Pasha, who forms but one 

With Scheik-oul-Islam, fountain of salvation. 

Here on thy judgment stone 

I claim mine own. 



230 Hand-of -Sultan. 

" Hamsa of Hlllah, who to all the tribes 

Art known for judgments upright and unswerving, 
Behold an unbeliever who with gibes 

Smirches the name of the Prophet ! Undeserving 
Is he of life, for odious blasphemies. 

But that is nothing to mine aim. Consider 
Only this woman ; for the Sultan's ease 

With hard-won means I bought, a generous bidder, 
Her from her master here " 
With conscience clear. 

" And when methought he stept aside to write 

A bill of sale, behold, with shameless forehead 
Forth had he fled into the waste and night, 

And only now I found him and this Gourred, 
My purchased slave, in hiding on the mound 

Where stands the keep in ruins. Wisest Kadi, 
I claim my slave, or else my thousand pound ; 

My slave the rather, for with her no lady 
At Stamboul can compare 
She is so fair. 



Hand-of -Sultan. 231 

" The money let him have. My witnesses 

Are ready. Is it right, a tricky Persian 
Should cheat poor Hand-of-Sultan of his fees? 

I charge you listen, and whatever version 
This man of guile may frame, believe him not. 

A pretty pass, when the hard-working trader 
Pays and gets no return ! For bought is bought 

And he'd no right to take her or persuade her 
When the price once was told, 
The fair slave sold." 

But while his cone-shaped bonnet the wise Kadi 

Donned with an air of virtue, from her face 
Swept her long veil that sorely injured lady 

And on the justice poured her sun-bright grace. 
Mildly she spoke. " My lord judge, it would seem 

This slaver deems himself a marvelous jurist, 
If that to prove his crazy charge he dream ; 

For who is sure, although his right be surest ? 
And he is wondrous bold 
Pilp-rims to hold 



232 Hand-of -Sultan. 

" Who look no home to have, no friends, no wealth! 

True is it that he made the scandalous offer 
To this my lord and comrade, me by stealth 

Conveying to Stamboul, to fill their coffer 
With proceeds of my freedom basely sold. 

What answer was I need not say. The rather 
Hear who he is to whom his slave-curst gold 

This blind man tendered, from the tale to gather 
The crime that he has done, 
Infamy won. 

" He who stands there abused and fettered sore 

Has in his veins the blood of the Prophet ! Hasten 
Ye Arabs rude a Sayid to adore! 

See you not ? even Hand-of-Sultan, brazen 
Jew that he is, begins to tremble. Well, 

Loosen his bonds ! Now, on this Mirza Sayid 
All Mohammed, came at birth the spell 

That hung about the Prophet ; for there played 
About him balsamed air, 
Odors mdst rare. 



Hand-of -Sultan. 233 

" For he was set apart of Allah, light 

By thought and pen upon the world to lavish. 
The turban green he wears not, though his right, 

As I wear not a veil ; since just such slavish 
Badges are they of vices in our peoples. 

For Mollahs, Kadis, great men all and some 
On their pure lives must stand like deep-base steeples — 
Woman, no more a slave, 
Learn to be brave. 

" We fight for freedom. We do not rely 

On rights prescriptive, such as both inherit. 
Teaching the gospel of this Prophet high 

From God revealed through his abounding merit. 
Where Meccawards the Persian pilgrims throng 

We preach our faith — the first faith great Moham- 
med 
Taught at Medina clean of blood and wrong. 

Nor have we fled, nor have we hid, nor shammed, 
Nor lied, nor bought, nor sold. 
Nor touched his gold. 



234 Haiid-of -Sultan. 

" But what grips he within his greedy talons 

Thin, long and dry, predacious like a bird's? 
It is my rosary which he did not balance 

To snatch from me ! What use is there of words 
To argue need of change in all the laws 

That hamper women in the Moslem nations. 
When, like the lambkin in the cruel claws 

Of vulture, she who has no strong relations, 
Is seized with blow and scoff, 
Bound, hurried off 

" To feed the lust of some great man, and rouse 

In harems anguish, hatred and contention, 
Perhaps to cause the breakage of deep vows 

Or sow between stepchildren fierce contention ; 
Adding to burdens of the humble ; wasting 

On vanities the taxes of a town ; 
Through sloth and intrigue and divorces hasting 

From plane to plane forever down and down — 
Mother of Moslem child 
Bartered and soiled ! — 



Hand-of -Sultan. 235 

** What rule is that in early years whereunder 

Our offspring spoil? What school is it for them 
Where gluttony, lies and intrigue, heartbreak, blunder 

Still alternate ? One man as well might stem 
The waves of ocean with his feeble arms 

As rear his children virtuous in a harem. 
So many wives, and just so many harms! 

But since 'tis ignorance keeps them bad, alarum 
Should beat in every place 
To save the race 

" From utter rot, by holding every man 

To his one wife and teaching her the beauty 
Of knowledge and high thoughts, the daily plan 

Of work, the sweets of cleanliness and duty. 
And therewithal, for sake of those who earned 

Such freedom, loosen wives from shameful fetters 
Of veils and cloistered walls ! For these are spurned 

Daily by wicked women, while their betters 
Languish within the rope 
Sans love, sans hope ! 



XIV 



THE DERVISH 



XIV 



THE DERVISH 



" Give leave" cried Hand-of-Sultan, for he fancied 

The judge was moved by eloquence and looks, 
" Twas magic that ye two were at, when chanced 

My Arabs on your track. In holy books 
Stands written, Harut-Marut demons are 

That haunt the mound they call of Nimroud yonder. 
This talisman I feared would prove a bar 

To holding you, lest you from me should wander 

And by those demons led 

Again have fled. 

239 



240 The Dervish. 

"And trust not, Kadi, this bold she-magician! 

What proof is given we have a Sayid here ? 
Do Sayids, then, blaspheme and rouse sedition ? 

With wine and women, then, are they austere ? " 
But while he spake behind his ample robe 

He toward the Kadi four thin claws extended 
Which signified, No more this matter probe, 

And four pounds are your fee ! And thus he ended. 
So eloquent, they say, 
Is yellow clay 

Which has no tongue and yet all tongues can silence ! 

" The case is grave," the worthy judge replied, 
" If she is yours, why did you him such violence? 

Why so much force, if right be on your side ? 
I must look farther in the case. Speak out 

You that are said to be a prophet. Utter 
Your thought, nor longer dream, nor stare about, 

Nor, like to men that talk in trances, mutter !" — 
Through Ali's purple eyes 
There shot surprise 



The Dervish. 241 

" But speech came not ; for in the attentive gang 

Of ruffians of the bazaar and Arab shepherds 
A tattered youth of piteous visage sprang 

Light as o'er hurdles vault the beauteous leopards. 
Lovely he was, for all his rags and dirt, 

And seized the sight with pleasure and with pity ; 
A blood-soaked bandage told his feet were hurt. 

He turned about with motion quick and witty, 
And drew within the fold 
A Dervish old. 

" The Dervish had a mien of majesty 

Conscious, like one who bears great news. Most 
haughty 
His nod was. Face and bearing somewhat free 

Brought low salaams from that slave-trader naughty, 
And made the Kadi him a place assign 

On his own carpet. Likewise by his turban 
Believers read the unmistaking sign 

That oft he'd been to Mecca. Then more urban 
He did the Kadi greet 
And took his seat. 



242 , The Dervish. 

" Welcome, O holy pilgrim from afar," 

The justice said, " You come when most is wanted 
One who is practiced in the subtle war 

Of wits that scholars wage within the vaunted 
Halls of right Moslem learning. It is true 

That Hand-of-Sultan claims this fair-faced woman 
As his bought slave. But now there's naught to do ; 

What better were, to pass the time, than summon 
These doctors to dispute 
Religion's root ? 

" It likes me well so," condescended he, 

" For I have heard the lady's strange oration ; 
But," quoth the Dervish, " is it right that we 

Before a Jew of mysteries make relation 
Sacred to Moslem only? Heretics 

Must be confuted ; but for unbelievers 
There is no hope, and 'tis most wrong to mix 

Discourse before such scoffers and deceivers 
As Jews and Christians are. 
I come from far 



The Dervish. 243 

" With him my son and bring in yonder sack 

Broidered thus richly jewels that are destined 
For Hamsa, Kadi of Hillah ; but my back 

Soon must I turn on this well-built predestined 
Illustrious town, of whom the inhabitants 

Are famed for learning, courage and free-giving. 
I cannot stay, I must avoid the haunts 

Of luxury ; for always I am living 
On dry bread and the stale 
Of desert well." 

At this the justice opened wide his eyes. 

Mashallah, was his thought, at last, uncourted, 
Has luck fallen to you, Hamsa? have your wise 

Enactments far as Stamboul been reported ? 
Are you about to be Hakeem, Emir — 

Pasha perhaps ? Upon his townsmen gloated 
This justice vain and strove unmoved to appear; 

Then glared on Gourred while in heart he doted : 
" A better wife than she 
I may not see." 



244 ^-^^ Dervish. 

" True, holy man ! " broke in the wily Jew, 

" I am not one to hear the secret proffers 
Of argument, called ketman, which th^ few 

And friendly make between them. But no scoffers 
Are tribes of Judah 'gainst your Moslem faith. 

I'm here to claim as mine this goodly woman 
Whom I affirm, by Azrael who slayeth, 

Was bought from him whom once more I do summon." 
Then made he other sign 
With fingers nine. 

But, " Listen," Ali cried in musical 

Fine scholar-phrases like the texts of Koran, 
" To Jew and Christian, Moslem, Hindu, all 

The tribes of man on coasts however foreign 
My Gospel speaks. I cry the name of God, 

The one high God of Moses, Christ, Mohammed, 
Yet differently. He lives in every clod 

As well as souls for diamond beauty fam^d. 
Creator — thus alone 
Can he be known. 



The Dervish. 245 

" Seven ways he shows existence. For which seven 

Seven Arabic letters stand. These are on earth 
Mere pale reflections of the signs in heaven 

He placed to chronicle creation's birth. 
Force, 'Power and Will are seen in sun, moon, Mars; 

In Mercury Action ; Jove means Condescension; 
Glory in Venus ; by that sage of stars. 

Old Saturn, Revelation first had mention. 
These are to men and brutes 
His Attributes. 

"Last night with her, my adopted sister, friend 

And true disciple I beheld the vision 
Of Nimrod and, till darkness was at end. 

Heard a strange tale of Ahram, whose old mission 
Was like to mine, like to Mohammed's, like 

To that sweet Christ's, whom Israel crucified ; 
And then once more I felt that me shall strike 

A similar fate, that briefly I shall bide 
Within the incarnate span 
Of mortal man. 



246 The Dervish. 

" In Koufa's moldering mosque, where bled to death 

AH the martyr, I was early witness 
In vision of the saint who for the faith 

Died which to those rude days had special fitness. 
Methought I saw him hacked and disemboweled. 

And a clear sound that seemed the lightning's voice 
A like reward to the reformer voweled. 

Whereat the foolish should once more rejoice, 
Ignorant toward what seed 
The martyrs bleed. 

" But my great mission shall not be in vain. 

We're God's own ; he is ours ; from him we borrow 
Our wondrous robe of fleshly joy and pain — 

And lay it back within the chest to-morrow. 
He is unique, moveless, eterne, unseen. 

None is but he. But I his prophet latest 
Share that great glory with my saints eighteen 

Whereof one is a woman. Thou that statest 
Wise Gourred is a slave 
Dost merely rave. 



The Dervish. 247 

" She is so high above all women other 

That when she dies of some terrific death 
Her soul shall kindle in another Mother 

Of Purity, and our eternal faith 
Live on through persecutions ! . . . O high Gate 

With sevenfold arch,through which the godhead enters 
And lo, the world ! . . . O God-breaths early and late — 

Each one a prophet in whose teaching centres 
Some truth, to oversoar 
One barrier more ! . . ." 

So speaking, deeply the rapt prophet pondered 

At the divan, nor was aware of aught 
But his great subject, and still on had wandered 

Back had not him the hoary Dervish brought : 
" Hamsa the Kadi ! surely this is one 

By look and speech of lofty race and learning. 
I marvel that the case was e'er begun. 

Dismiss it, and direct the Jew, for spurning 
True Moslem, first restore 
The chain she wore. 



248 The Dervish. 

" And recompense this pretty boy, my son, 

Who in your service beat his feet all bloody. 
Ah viper ! " rose his voice, " hereafter shun 

Plots of such scope, or you shall stake your body ! 
Raven of ill that ere the dawn hast tried 

To filch this treasure ; wolf in cunning ; greedy 
As boar, and crafty as the fox ; cool-eyed 

Tenacious as chameleons ! a speedy 
Reward shall you obtain 
But nothing gain ! 

" Two-colored as the pie, and doglike fawning, 

False as sheet-lightning and as locust swift, 
You shall regret, ere comes another dawning. 

Lies have been husbanded with such unthrift. 
Think you a Kadi such as this could fail 

To see she was no slave, nor ever bartered 
For aught at all ? Think you the crazy tale 

Will credence get ? Or are you of those chartered 
Liars who are believed 
By men deceived ? " . . . 



The Dervish. 249 

Then as in vain the Jew to stop him struggled — 

" Make way " he cried, " let these unchallenged pass ! 
Come, boy, and show the Kadi what you smuggled 
O'er hill and dale, through sands and river-grass ! 
And since I'm poor, and this my son is fair. 

Young and straight-limbed, but torn and stained 
with travel, 
O, all ye true believers, do not spare 
Your wealth, but give of largess, and unravel 
The knots that spoil the grace 
Of his sweet face ! " 

A merry humor twinkled in the eye 

Of that sad boy as with an eel-like motion 
He ran from man to man. His courteous cry 

Was scholarly and pressing. Now devotion 
To thoughts sublime had kept the Prophet there, 

Had Gourred not with dignity departed. 
He followed ; on their way each head was bare 

Some even kissed the skirt of him who smarted 

Still from the cruel blows 

Of former foes. 
II* 



250 The Dervish. 

And many a gift they had that morn received 

From Hand-of-Sultan, in the boy did gather. 
For all the Kadi's radiant look perceived 

And his good luck, they hoped, their own would 
father ; 
And with deep groans the slaver doled a pile 

Of silver, and the judge, not long entreated, 
Gave a rich ring and gained a beaming smile. 
Then at a nod the laughing youngster flitted 
Off, and the Dervish sate 
Serene, sedate. 

" Come, Holy Father," quoth the Kadi then, 

" Undo thy bag and show to all each jewel 
For me brought, Hamsa, Kadi, chief of men I 

To good men gracious, to the wicked cruel ! 
I marvel whence they are ; from Ispahan ? 

(Poor uncle, are you dead?) Or my 'decisions — 
Have they so pleased rich men of Hamadan 

They send me gifts ? I too have had my visions : 
They were of much more gold 
Than hands could hold ! " 



The Dervish. 251 

Serene he smiled, that Dervish, and his beard 

Gently caressed. " Jewels are here," he muttered, 
" Richer than any you have seen or heard 

Cited in song or e'er in elf-tales uttered. 
Look but on this ! " . . . and from the sack he drew 

A little scroll and read : The life As short 
Of the voracious beast. . . The scroll he threw 

Into the judge's lap. " Heard you report 
Of pearl," asked he, "more rare, 
More rich, more fair? 

" And see this diamond : He who digs a pit 

For others often falls therein ! ". . . Scroll second 
Fell on the Kadi's robe. But him a fit 

Of fury strangled, for he saw he'd reckoned 
Without his host. He rolled his greedy eyes 

Like swine in yard tormented, toward the mocker 
In helpless wrath, o'ercome by quick surprise. 

Grotesque he leaned and goggling, like the knocker 
Of bronze Franks mould like boars 
To deck their doors. 



252 The Dervish. 

Now when the keen-eyed Dervish saw returning 
Speech, and the thundercloud about to burst, 
Quoth he : "I fear my jewels you are spurning. 

Yet here is Take no bribe among the first. 
But hush, no word ! I have within my budget 

News that ye dream not : — The Great Sultan's 
dead! 
Ha, there is news ! nor do I longer grudge it. 
Fly Jew and Kadi ! Ruffians, fly ! o'erhead 
Hang the long-treasured blows 
Of lifelong foes ! 

" Hillah's in secret ferment and conspiring 

With shut bazaar ! Bad news flies fast ! The road 
To Bagdad is beset ! Hear ye that firing? 

Old bloodfeuds knock for you at each abode !" . . . 
He said no more, for at the signal shot 

The whole divan — Jew, Kadi, Arabs — tumbled 
Out from the court, as though upon the spot 

Where devils dance they had unwitting stumbled ; 
And while each hurried fast 
Forth slowly passed 



The Dervish, 253 

The Dervish blithe, and presently discovered 

A ruinous house, apart, and foul to see. 
But entering, there he found a carpet covered 

Before the fountain with a banquet free, 
With wine and coffee, fruits and tender meats, 

Succulent roots and all that warms the senses, 
And there his well-robed boy the Dervish greets. 

Then down they sit and banquet like to princes, 
Quaff and drown care with sups 
From oft-drained cups.. 

Against the outer gate there was a knocking. 

Behold, 'twas Gourred, seeking for the seer 
Asylum. Lo, and there the Dervish, mocking 

With goodly feast his piety austere ! 
" Well met," he cried, '■'■ Come to the banquet ; bless 

Allah who cast me in your way this morning. 
Your theory's fine, but give me worldliness ! 

Ho, boy, more wine ! Nay, Prophet, be not scorning 
Safety, good food, and cheer ! 
You see me here 



254 The Dervish. 

" The only man in Hillah cool and happy. 

And why? Because with twice-filed tongue I've 
drawn 
That juice from wood time-seasoned both and sappy — 

I mean the gold fools hold for me in pawn ! 
I have no house for which to tremble. Taxes 

I levy ; never pay them. And the star 
I worship best is that which wanes and waxes 
Reflected in the wine from yonder jar. 
The round heaven of my soul 
Is you, O bowl ! " 

Then AH woke as one who starts from dreams 

And found sweet Gourred going. " It is fated," 
Quoth he, " this frank deceiver, who now seems 

Only for fleshly vanities created, 
Shall zealous be for our great faith beyond 

All others ; who, in his mere sport and leisure 
Freed you and me from insult and from bond, 

Shall find in martyrdom his keenest pleasure. 
Sit we, and seek to gain 
This master brain ! " 



The Dervish. 255 

So, while all Hillah is aquake with fears — 

Each gun at rest, who's Sultan no one knowing — 
These earnest sit till the lean moon appears 

Yellowing apace while the night's breath is blowing. 
The Prophet rose : " I rank you now as one 

Of mine, though obstinate. My teaching ponder. 
For as each comet to the hearth of sun 

Returns at last, how far soe'er he wander, 
You, O most deep and bold, 
Shall join our fold. 

" We must depart to comfort Nimrod worried 

By fearful crimes. We can no longer stay. 
Perchance we ne'er shall meet on earth. Yet Gourred 

And I shall love you, though from far away. 
Meantime, farewell my brother martyr! When 

At your grim hour of trial flames are lapping 
Your weary feet, hold fast in memory then 

How on this day the grace of God was wrapping 
You — thus I say, select — 
You, the elect !".... 



256 The Dervish. 

They passed as pass the roebuck and the hind 

Shapely, deep-eyed, a perfect man and woman. 
The Dervish pondered. Ail the world seemed rind 

Without the melon ; all our pleasures human 
Stale ; then a horror of his former life 

Of naught and naughtiness with power possessed 
him — 
The folly, groping and the aimless strife — 
Till half he had of shallowness confessed him. 
So, brooding on God, he paced 
Forth to the waste. 



J 



THE EPILOGUE 



THE EPILOGUE 



Farewell, sweet friends. The kernel of the tale 

Shows not in books, nor is at shops for sale. 

The frame around about is history learned 

From scholar-statesman Gobineau, who earned 

Honors enough from his fair Mother France. 

Reckless is she, yet eager for advance 

hi arts and letters — Genius with a torch 

That radiates clearly from her pillared porch 

Central among old Europe's varied fanes ! 

259 



26o The Epilogue. 

The fate of the reformer thus contains 
Fates of old Nimrod, as in Chinese box 
Carved by sloiv craftsmen withoiit lids or locks 
An inner form of kindred shape is seen. 
I give you symbols. For whatever has been 
Exists to-day in those two caskets strange, 
This earth and our smooth brain ; 7ior out of range 
Are future marvels in behijzd the eye 
And here below the blue skull of the sky. 



Now should ye long to know the second trance 
Of wailing ghosts and all the sad romance 
Of A li and his Gourred — zvho more glad 
Than Charles de Kay ? But should ye find it bad, 
Right well he can console himself, be sure ; 
Blithely your censure or neglect endure ; 
And ne'er regret the days of thankless toil 
And fruitless spending of the midnight oil 
Risked on the chance his country's folk to please. 



The Epilogtie. 261 

For poets sing like ivind amo7ig the trees 

Now high, then low ; nozv szveetly, then most ill ; 

And as, to writing, there is need of quill 

And paper too ; as wind is naught sans leaves; 

Even so the singer who no praise receives 

Is pen sans paper ; breeze sans tree ; a hand 

Without the harp ; a king that lacks of land ; 

A nerveless lion ; a trustee disgraced ; 

An actor mouthing grandly toward the waste. 



V. 




LBRARY OF CONGRESS 

II II nil II III II III! 

016 112 359 6 



S 



